Democrats in disarray as Trump immunity ruling raises stakes

With democracy at a moment of maximum peril, millions were pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as a last wall of defence - but the debate changed that

With fear for our democracy, I dissent." So wrote supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor in a minority opinion this week. She was far from alone in the view that, with Donald Trump threatening an imperial presidency", American democracy is at a moment of maximum peril.

Millions are pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as the last wall of defence. Surely, they believed, Democrats would field their best and brightest led by a dynamic presidential candidate and demagogue slayer. Instead the party is offering 81-year-old Joe Biden and an internal civil war.