Democrats stared into the abyss after President Joe Biden fumbled away the first debate and within 72 hours had mostly talked themselves into the idea that it wasn’t worth throwing their convention into chaos over one bad night.

But Biden continued making mistakes that convinced even those who wanted to believe that there was a more systemic problem with the president and his campaign.

It’s a family affair 

First lady Jill Biden may have come on too strong when she tried to rehab her husband’s debate performance. “Joe, you did such a great job!” she told him at a rally afterward, sounding like the teacher she is by profession. “You answered every question, you knew all the facts!”

But the Vogue cover spread featuring the first lady struck some Democrats as ill-timed. While preplanned, with the only reference to the debate inserted into an editor’s note, it reinforced the impression there was insufficient introspection after an embarrassing loss to former President Donald Trump that itself reinforced every concern about the 81-year-old incumbent’s age and acuity. 

Then came reports that Hunter Biden was one of the strongest family advocates of his father remaining in the race. “A good rule of thumb, whatever Hunter Biden advises, do the opposite,” a Democratic lawmaker ranting about the “Praetorian Guard” surrounding the president told the news website NOTUS.

To make matters worse, the younger Biden, who was always a lightning rod and is now a convicted felon, began appearing this week at White House meetings. This did not inspire confidence in the president’s ability to course-correct, indicating flawed judgment and an even more insular approach. 

Shifting explanations

Biden’s camp initially said his hoarse voice and weak debate showing were because of a cold, though that was not said beforehand and the president glad-handed supporters at a Waffle House after the 90-minute event concluded. 

Then Biden allies suggested that perhaps aides overprepared Biden, even though it was later reported the preparation session began at 11 a.m. and left room in the president’s schedule for afternoon naps. It should be noted that Biden himself did not make such claims.

But Biden did tell the crowd at a private fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, that he was still getting over jet lag when he debated Trump. “I wasn’t very smart,” he said. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, going through I don’t know how many time zones — for real, I think it was 15 time zones. … I didn’t listen to my staff.” 

Except Biden had been back from his last foreign trip for 12 days by the time he took the stage in Atlanta. He spent half of that at Camp David.

Going silent

It took Biden days to communicate with key Democratic stakeholders after the debate, despite widespread dissatisfaction with his performance and anxiety about the general election. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) told CNN Tuesday night he had not heard from Biden. The story was much the same for many Democratic congressional leaders and governors, though the White House staff did some damage control on his behalf.

Biden did not keep to a particularly busy public schedule either. There was a well-received rally in North Carolina before his weekend getaway, a five-minute reaction to the Supreme Court’s Trump immunity decision, and a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House. All involved scripted remarks read from a teleprompter, and he did not take questions from reporters. 

By the end of Wednesday, Biden had spoken to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), top ally Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in addition to holding an evening meeting with Democratic governors. Those governors reaffirmed Biden was staying in the race, as the president and Vice President Kamala Harris did in a campaign call the same day.

Biden also taped interviews with two black radio stations and is scheduled to sit down with ABC News on Friday. Biden’s ABC interview will be with George Stephanopoulos, a longtime network anchor who was previously White House communications director under former President Bill Clinton and a Democratic operative. 

In the intervening days, Biden was panned for being slow to work the phones. The White House cited his busy schedule.

A second dam burst

Not only are Democratic members of Congress starting to call on Biden to end his reelection campaign, but fissures are appearing in his once tight-lipped inner circle. 

A White House all-staff call leaked to the press in real time. Details of Biden’s routine, including claims that he is most engaged between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., have been reported. There is public finger-pointing between people close to the Biden campaign. An “ally” told the New York Times that Biden wasn’t sure he could rescue his flagging bid for a second term.

Clyburn, the man most responsible for reviving Biden’s 2020 campaign with a critically timed endorsement in South Carolina, keeps signaling openness to Biden replacement scenarios in media interviews, though without ever committing to them. 

Neither Biden’s White House nor his campaign have been particularly leak-prone in the past, especially compared to Trump pre-2024.

Mixed signals

“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can and as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running,” Biden told campaign staffers in a conference call on Wednesday. “I’m the nominee of the Democratic Party. No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we’re going to win because when Democrats unite, we always win.”

Biden later repeated this language in a fundraising appeal. Democratic governors left the White House reaffirming that Biden was still in it to win it.

Hours before those governors spoke to the press, however, the Washington Post reported that Biden and senior advisers “accepted Wednesday the grim ultimatum” that they must quickly set things right — even “demonstrate his fitness for office” — or “face a significant effort to force him to step aside.”

It’s possible that Democrats who want Biden to exit are framing his and his team’s acceptance of political reality as waffling about his campaign. The New York Times story about Biden understanding the stakes was originally headlined that he was “weighing whether to continue in the race,” while most of the quotes therein reflected either self-doubt or a realization that time is of the essence. 

But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Harris the Democrats’ “future” in Wednesday’s briefing, part of Biden’s 2020 promise to be a “bridge” candidate to a new generation of leaders. “One of the reasons why he picked the vice president, Kamala Harris, is because she is indeed the future of the party,” she told reporters. The first lady, by contrast, declared while introducing her husband at a fundraiser, “Joe isn’t just the right person for the job. He’s the only person for the job.”

More than 90% of the pledged delegates at the Democratic convention are formally committed to Biden. While they could abandon him, the DNC rules don’t anticipate the involuntary removal of the nominee and the delegates would need to move against him en masse. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

In 2016, Trump beat back attempts to topple him at the GOP convention and then even closer to the election stared down party leaders panicking over the Access Hollywood tape in which he made lewd comments about women. Trump won in November, despite trailing Hillary Clinton by 4.5 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average this time eight years ago. Biden’s current deficit is 2.9 points.

The extent of the Democratic panic over Biden’s handling of the debate and its aftermath suggests deep-seated angst about his vitality, electability, and campaign strategy.

President Joe Biden’s feeble debate performance has Democrats worrying about his reelection prospects to the point where some in the party are for the first time seriously entertaining scenarios for replacing him as the nominee. 

Notwithstanding the Democrats’ intense fear of another election loss to former President Donald Trump, Biden’s party faces immense and possibly insurmountable hurdles when it comes to dislodging the incumbent from the ticket.

It’s (mostly) up to Biden

Biden is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. He won all the primaries, even if he faced only token opposition in most of them, and more than 90% of the pledged delegates. Under the rules, the simplest and arguably only feasible path to removing Biden is for him to withdraw voluntarily.

Over the weekend, Biden met with his family to discuss the future of his campaign. It is not clear whether he ever seriously considered dropping out. Either way, the Biden family by all accounts came away from their meeting more committed to continuing his reelection bid.

DEMOCRATS CALLING FOR BIDEN REPLACEMENT FACE OBSTACLES

Leading Democrats could go to the Oval Office or Camp David and try to convince Biden to end his campaign, arguing that a loss in November is inevitable and would tarnish his legacy as the man who got Trump out of the White House. This would be similar to how Republicans persuaded Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974.

But Nixon was facing impeachment, and Republicans could tell him they didn’t think they had the Senate votes for his acquittal. Democrats have no comparable leverage over Biden should he reject their political counsel, aside from big donors withholding campaign contributions — which could increase the risk of Trump winning if Biden were to call their bluff.

There are some longer-shot options to force Biden out, which we will explore later, but the most realistic scenarios require his cooperation.

The Kamala Harris problem

As vice president, Kamala Harris would be the most logical Biden replacement. Most campaign finance experts also believe she could keep the Biden-Harris campaign war chest, which could be transferred to other Democratic entities but not a new campaign.

The problem is that Harris doesn’t poll better than Biden, or at least she didn’t before last week’s debate, and most Democrats who want to replace Biden want to get rid of her too.

Ousting both the sitting president and vice president while also needing them to remain in office would be a tall order. 

One suggestion on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was that Justice Sonia Sotomayor could be persuaded to retire and that Biden could appoint Harris to replace her. But Harris would have to be confirmed by the Senate and her replacement as vice president would need to be approved by both chambers, including the Republican-controlled House. If the vice presidency was left vacant, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) would be next in the line of presidential succession. 

Passing over Harris for president or replacing her as vice president would also create political headaches for a party that is already trying to shore up its black support ahead of November.

Not clear other Democrats would do better

A post-debate poll by Data for Progress found the Biden-Trump race was still competitive and none of the other major Democrats tested — Harris, Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — run convincingly better than the president against his Republican predecessor.

The counterargument to this is that none of them run meaningfully worse than Biden either despite not having done any campaigning for themselves. Presumably, Whitmer, Shapiro, or Klobuchar could help narrow the gap against Trump in their now-competitive home states, though there is no guarantee.

It’s also true that all the candidates except for Harris would have to raise their own money and stand up their own campaign organization, though some of the former could be transferred from Biden to the Democratic National Committee or super PACs. Even Harris would presumably need to make some changes to the campaign’s top brass.

There’s also a risk that a candidate who runs to the left of Biden might also be vulnerable to Trump, as most Democratic campaign professionals believed about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in 2016 and 2020. This is why Biden won the nomination over Sanders and a slew of younger liberals, including Harris, who dropped out before the first primary. Biden so far remains the only politician who has beaten Trump.

Conventional wisdom?

A massive mutiny at the Democratic convention could in theory displace Biden. But there would be huge practical problems.

While nearly all the pledged delegates are committed to Biden, there is some question as to how fully bound they are, with DNC rules allowing them to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” But it would require a huge slice of Biden’s nearly 3,900 delegates to defect to deprive him of the nomination and the failure of anyone to clinch a majority on the first ballot for the 700 uncommitted Democratic superdelegates to get to weigh in on the nominee. The superdelegates are party elected officials and leaders whose participation could help Biden, though it would probably require his near-total collapse to even get to that point.

There are provisions to remove an incapacitated nominee. Donna Brazile claimed in her memoirs that she floated this idea for the 2016 Democratic convention, as much as to improve the party’s chances of beating Trump as because of any health problems Hillary Clinton might have had.

“Perhaps changing the candidate was a chance to win this thing, to change the playing field in a way that would send Donald Trump scrambling and unable to catch up,” Brazile wrote. The idea went nowhere. Clinton was still under 70 at the time and generally polled better against Trump than Biden has this cycle.

But Clinton was also the former secretary of state at the time, not the current president. The Democrats would have to hold that Biden lacked the capacity to be the nominee while also needing him to serve out the remainder of his term.

The same calculus that led Democrats to forgo a meaningful primary challenge to Biden could doom any DNC coup attempt: These gambits would be more likely to weaken Biden further than to succeed in removing him.

Democrats and democracy

Democrats have made the preservation of democracy a centerpiece of their argument for 2024. While that can be used to justify any legal means necessary to stop Trump, whom they argue is a unique threat to democracy, it would be poor optics to replace the nominee with someone who didn’t participate in the primary process.

Every president up to Dwight Eisenhower was nominated before anything much resembling the modern primary process, which arguably wasn’t fully in place until Jimmy Carter. But modern Democrats are arguing that features of the constitutional republic like the Electoral College, the filibuster, and the Senate itself are undemocratic. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

In this context, Democrats are going to remove the winner of every single presidential primary this year and replace him with a noncandidate who received zero votes or only a smattering of write-ins throughout the country? For no reason other than he is not guaranteed to win a democratic election?

Nevertheless, many Democrats are saying Trump’s threat to democracy has been worsened by the Supreme Court. This could make them willing to contemplate drastic measures if Biden slips further behind in the polls.