To replace or not: Dems angsty after last night

Pls excuse my use of sports metaphors

Screengrab of last night’s debate via CNN on YouTube.

We knew it wouldn’t be an easy night for Joe Biden. He’s an old man who’s obviously in decline. What we did not know is how bad it could get.

For more than about 90 minutes, the 81-year-old president stumbled through his debate with Donald Trump. His raspy delivery was halting, his diction was sloppy and, even when not talking, he often left his mouth agape like a stroke victim.

As often happens with Trump, whenever he flapped his own lips, he issued forth a blizzard of lies. Biden seemed incapable of countering them, confused as he was about what his opponent was saying. In basketball terms, the president missed a lot of lay-ups.

I’ve heard some Biden supporters say that the CNN journalists moderating the event, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, should have corrected Trump on the fly. I for one do not believe it’s their job to help either man. Even so, in the absence of fact checking on the part of the moderators, Biden should have stepped up himself and challenged Trump on his false statements.

In boxing terms, the battered Biden, seated in his corner, could not answer the bell. Trump delivered a technical knockout. The question for Democrats is how to unring that bell. I don’t think it can be done. If Biden’s performance had been an aberration, that would be one thing. But with his infirmities on full display, he projected an image that merely cemented preexisting concerns about whether the old man was up to the job. That sort of damage is structural; it cannot be easily cleaned up.

Ironically, Biden’s campaign thought the rules of the forum, which they reportedly asked for, would work to his advantage: There was no live audience to hoot and holler; if a candidate exceeded his time allotment, his mic would be shut off. Biden’s people assumed Trump would be throttled without his jeering MAGA fans, and that his rants would be cut short by technicians manning the sound board.

Instead, the rules seemed to impose rare discipline on Trump. I know — it’s all relative, but Trump was forced to shorten his answers. And the lack of an audience enabled him to focus more on his rehearsed message than playing it for laughs or boos against his opponent.

In other words, everything that could go wrong for the Biden campaign did go wrong last night. Indeed, there were so many problems with his performance that it’s hard to see how he recovers to win in November. Now the question facing Democrats is what, if anything, should be done about it? Speculation about replacing Biden at the top of the ticket has been rampant on social media since about halfway through the debate, though as of this writing, no prominent Democrat has actually called for Biden’s replacement. But can it actually be done?

Chicago mayor Richard Daley shouts an antisemitic obscenity at Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT) at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, also held in Chicago. -Wikipedia

Experts say there are two options: convince Biden to announce that he’ll decline the party’s nomination if it’s offered. That would be the cleanest way. Indeed, there has been speculation that Biden’s campaign was aware of his problems and deliberately pushed for an early debate so that, if his performance was as dreadful as last night’s, the machinery could be set in motion to replace him before the party’s convention the week of August 19 in Chicago. If true, that stage has been set.

As explained this morning in Politico, “While the party technically does have a system for nominating a fresh candidate at the convention in the event of a candidate declining a nomination, the entire process is a creaky one that hasn’t been considered in decades.” That process would be executed at an open, contested convention in which more than 700 party insiders would pick the new nominee. Would that designation automatically, or by default, go to Vice President Kamala Harris?

“If Biden opts to abandon his reelection campaign, Harris would likely join other top Democratic candidates looking to replace him,” reports ABC News. In other words, Harris, whose approval ratings are even worse than her boss’s, would likely get in line with the others, which would probably include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

But even if a new consensus candidate emerged from Chicago victorious, ABC adds, “conservative groups have suggested they will file lawsuits around the country, potentially questioning the legality of the Democratic candidate’s name on the ballot.”

But what if Biden refuses to abdicate? NBC News reports that “there would have to be a revolt among Democratic National Convention delegates, the vast majority of whom were elected on their pledge to nominate Biden. But that’s what some Democrats were thinking about Thursday night.”

And here’s a good FAQ from the Wall Street Journal addressing the logistics of replacing Biden (free link). It states flatly that, “Since Biden has enough delegates to win the nomination, if he stays in the race there isn’t a path for another candidate to become the Democratic nominee.”

To those who think Biden can still win and lead, look at it this way: As NBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin said this morning (and I’m paraphrasing), if it’s true that no board of directors of a major corporation would hire a loose cannon and convicted felon like Donald Trump to be CEO, so too is it true that that same board would not hire an 81-year old who had a job interview like Biden’s last night.

Suffice it to say that we have a mess on our hands. No matter what Biden decides to do, there will be adverse consequences for him and his party. If Biden stays in, he will likely be defeated by Trump. If he gets out and a different Democrat receives the nomination, it could create a ballot crisis with legal challenges in all 50 states.

Nothing good will come of this, except perhaps that I will have some great stories to tell my soon-to-be grandson in about 15 years.