The question of whether the Democratic Party will replace President Joe Biden atop its presidential ticket is a favorite topic in political circles these days, but the logistics involved make such a scenario exceedingly unlikely.
The current flavor of speculation surrounds the June 27 presidential debate between Biden and former President Donald Trump. It is the first of two scheduled debates for the 2024 presidential election cycle.
After many incidents raising questions about his physical and mental fitness for office, the debate will offer Biden an opportunity to show that he really is up to the job and that the concerns about his mental and physical acuity are overblown. But if he fails, the early date of the debate supposedly would give the Democratic Party time to replace Biden atop the ticket and avoid disaster in November.
But at this stage in the game, there is very little the party can do to defenestrate its presumptive nominee without creating a major intraparty conflict. The only way it can is if Biden voluntarily steps aside and anoints Vice President Kamala Harris as his chosen successor.
There are three reasons why replacing Biden at this juncture is, at worst, nearly impossible and, at best, a logistical nightmare. The first involves deadlines, the second has to do with personnel, and the third is the lack of an obvious replacement.
Deadlines
There are three deadlines relevant to this discussion: July 13, Aug. 7, and Aug. 19. Each one presents a hurdle to any attempt by the Democratic Party to replace Biden. We will analyze each in turn.
July 13, more than two weeks after the first debate, is the first deadline of note. It is the day that the Indiana Democratic Party selects its delegates to the national convention. At this point, the more than 4,600 delegates to the Democratic Party's national convention will all be selected, with the vast majority chosen because of their commitment to the president.
Less than month later is the Aug. 7 deadline, which is the date that the nominees for each party must be finalized in order to appear on the general election ballot in Ohio. Granted, earlier this month, the state delayed the deadline for major parties after Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) called a special session of the Ohio legislature. But the Democratic Party continues to forge ahead with plans to nominate the president through a virtual vote prior to the Aug. 19 convention in Chicago.
The absolute last moment the party could replace Biden (assuming it did not hold a virtual nomination) is at the convention, which runs from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22. At this point, any attempt to replace Biden would spill out into the open and involve a messy soap opera that would unfold on the convention floor and lay bare the Democratic Party's deep divisions for the world to see.
Personnel
The second hurdle to ousting Biden is personnel. Replacing the sitting president of the United States as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party requires the buy-in of thousands of people who have been hand-picked by the president and his aides for their loyalty.
The largest group whose support must be secured is the convention delegates themselves. The thousands of delegates from every state and territory who have pledged to vote for Biden were chosen specifically for their loyalty to the president.
To replace Biden atop the ticket, a majority of delegates must coalesce around an alternative candidate under a condensed timeline. And since all of them were selected as delegates due to their loyalty to the president, it would likely take direction from Biden to support another candidate. Such a scenario would require Biden to step aside voluntarily, but that exposes another problem: the lack of an obvious successor.
No succession plan
In order to replace Biden as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, the party must coalesce around an alternative candidate. But there is little consensus about who that candidate would be or even could be.
The most obvious answer is Harris, who is already on the ticket as vice president. But the first woman to be vice president carries her own set of liabilities. The most glaring is the fact that she is somehow more unpopular than the woefully unpopular Biden. If replacing Biden atop the ticket is supposed to bolster the Democratic Party's chances of retaining the White House in November, conventional wisdom dictates that Harris is not the answer.
But any attempt to bypass Harris creates challenges of its own. The party that has aligned itself with the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion will have to somehow justify the fact that it passed over the party's first black woman vice president in favor of another nominee.
If the party is able to overcome that divisive and messy problem, then the question becomes who is tapped to replace Biden. Various names such as Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), and Josh Shapiro (D-PA) have been among the suggested alternatives. The progressive wing of the party will no doubt attempt to push its own candidate, perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), ensuring that any attempt to coalesce around one candidate will be a long and arduous process that will only further expose the party's divisions.
Biden or bust
No, the answer to all the rampant speculation of replacing Biden is that it is just not really feasible at such a late stage in the electoral calendar to put in another candidate. The Democrats are stuck with Biden — whether they like it or not.
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For the Republican Party, this is the best possible outcome. Biden is one of the most unpopular incumbents in recent memory, and even a guilty verdict in a Manhattan show trial against Trump was not enough to move polling in the president's direction.
At this point, for the Democratic Party, it is Biden or bust.
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