President Joe Biden’s performance in the first debate Thursday has sparked a new round of criticism from Democrats, as well as public and private musing about whether he should remain at the top of the ticket. “There is a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of this debate. How his voice sounded. He seemed a little disoriented,” David Axelrod, who served as a top White House and campaign official for former President Barack Obama, said on CNN. “There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue,” Axelrod added. One Democratic lawmaker, asked by NBC News whether the debate inspired confidence in Biden, replied: “The best thing I can do to help Joe Biden is to pretend I didn’t get your text.” Publicly, Democratic officials continue to largely rally around Biden, and argue a lackluster performance doesn’t change the fundamental stakes of the election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose name is often floated as a potential alternative nominee, told reporters in the “spin room” after the debate that his party “could not be more wholly unified behind Biden” and said the president should not step aside. But the private whispers whipped up after Thursday’s debate performance, during which Biden had a raspy voice, spoke softly and a times seemed to lose his train of thought, leading his aides to try to deflect mid-way through the debate by saying he had a cold. In the modern era, a national party has never attempted to adversarially replace their nominee, in part, because they know it would likely fail. The issue came before both parties in 2016, but neither took action. Party rules make it almost impossible to replace a nominee without their consent, let alone smoothly replace them with someone else. And doing so would amount to party insiders overturning the results of primaries when Democratic voters overwhelmingly to nominate Biden. He won almost 99% of all delegates. And at the moment, there is no known, serious effort to push Biden off the top of the ticket. Still, the Democratic National Committee’s charter does make some provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work? What happens if Biden drops out before the convention? The only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw, something he’s sworn off repeatedly during other bumpy stretches of his campaign. He could do so while serving out the remainder of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968. If Biden were to drop out between now and when he’s scheduled to be formally nominated in August, it would create a free-for-all among Democrats since there is no mechanism for him or anyone else to anoint a chosen successor. It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Biden’s won 3,900 of them. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention. Since Biden’s opponents all won effectively no delegates throughout the Democratic nominating process, there’d be a virtual clean slate heading into the convention, and the decision would likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden. Biden would have some influence over his pledged delegates, but ultimately, they can vote as they please so candidates would likely campaign aggressively to win over each individual delegate. However, there’s a potentially important wrinkle: Democrats plan to formally nominate Biden virtually ahead of the late-August convention to sidestep any potential concerns about ballot access in Ohio, where a technical quirk has complicated things Democrats decided to plan a virtual nomination for Biden after Ohio Republicans balked at passing pro-forma legislation that would allow Biden to be on the ballot, even though the convention falls after a state deadline. But while Republicans passed a law to shift the deadline, Democrats decided to move forward with a virtual nomination nonetheless. Could Democrats replace Biden against his will? There’s no evidence the party would entertain a change without Biden’s consent. But even if they did, there is no mechanism for the national party to replace a candidate before the convention and certainly no way for them to anoint a chosen successor. If large swaths of the Democratic Party lost faith in Biden, delegates to the national convention could theoretically defect en masse. Of course, they were chosen to be delegates because of their loyalty to Biden and have pledged to support him at the convention. But, unlike many Republican delegates, Democratic delegates are not technically bound to their candidate. DNC rules allow delegates to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,” providing some wiggle room. The party’s charter does contain provisions to replace the nominee in the event of a vacancy. The measure is intended to be used in case of death, resignation or incapacitation
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