The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s president and publisher, Andrew Morse, discussed the editorial board’s call on Sunday’s front page for President Joe Biden to end his reelection bid, saying it was a decision made with care and reflected the news organization’s “responsibility.”
“We chose to publish this editorial because we felt it was the right thing to do,” Morse said Monday on ”Politically Georgia.”
“We want to have columnists and contributors who reflect a number of different opinions and perspectives across the board, again independent of our news coverage,” Morse said.
“Then there’s the AJC’s institutional voice. We use that very judiciously. When we choose to weigh in with an institutional editorial, we do it because we think, again, it’s the responsibility of this institution,” he said.
State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver also gave her insights on Biden’s lackluster performance in Thursday’s debate and how it could affect the election.
“Avoiding Donald Trump is the priority,” Oliver said. “Don’t panic, don’t wring your hands, this is far from over.”
Some Democrats don’t share that perspective and have floated the idea of replacing Biden at the top of the ticket.
“I could get excited about other potential tickets. Another potential ticket for me personally of (U.S. Transportation Secretary) Pete Buttigieg and (U.S. Sen.) Raphael Warnock, I would just be excited about that,” the Decatur-based Democrat said.
But Oliver said the decision is “not about me.”
“It is about beating Donald Trump,” she said. “Joe Biden has put together a team and has executed with a team in a way that is incredibly, incredibly important and worth standing by.”
The prospect of replacing Biden is not that simple. The delegates he won to the Democratic National Convention through this year’s presidential primaries and caucuses are pledged to support him for the nomination.
Plus, the party rules discourage challenging incumbent Democrats.
During the show the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Trump immunity case, sending it back to a lower court in Washington and dimming the prospect of a preelection trial on charges involving his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis broke down the verdict minutes after the ruling.
“There’s a lot of built-in protections for the presidency,” Kreis said.
But the ruling makes a distinction between official and private actions.
“Trump wanted absolute immunity no matter what for, for any kind of acts he did while he was a sitting president, so it’s certainly not that,” he said of the 6-3 ruling.
The handling of the decision broke some norms, Kreis said.
“Let me put it this way, usually when justices dissent, and this is a 6-3 opinion with, with the liberals dissenting, they say I respectfully dissent,” said the author of “Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development.”
He noted: “Justice Sotomayor said, ‘I fear for our democracy. I dissent.’ ”
Tuesday on “Politically Georgia”: Republican state Agricultural Commissioner Tyler Harper and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, join the show.
