I suspect, at this moment, that Joe Biden will drop out. And it will be astonishing.
Why will he drop out? Because his blundering performance at the debate was not an anomaly, and, even when confronted with a very, very serious crisis in his candidacy, he is still unable to present a coherent, assertive presence to the media and public.
It wasn’t Biden being caught in an unexpected situation for which he was unprepared and then responded with a poor choice of words or lack of command of the facts of the circumstance. He had all the time in the world and all the staff in the world and all the resources in the world to prepare for the debate and he still managed to muff it on a ridiculous scale. Then, after creating a dire crisis for his candidacy, he could not even muster a credible display of recovered command and assertiveness to even begin to counter-act the devasting effect of his debate performance.
He has offered excuses: he had a cold. He had jet lag. He works too hard and doesn’t get enough sleep. The fact that he even feels the need to offer excuses in very telling. He knows he has a serious problem.
Both Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn have indicated some reservations, when one would have expected fulsome support and a strong assertion of confidence.
There will be, in the coming days, a monumental clash between the insular coterie of family and friends surrounding Biden and the wider world of Democratic donors, strategists, Congressional delegates, party apparatchiks, and others, who will quietly begin to insinuate the obvious. Will it penetrate? I suspect it will, eventually.
And then… chaos. Representative James Clyburn will surely expect Kamala Harris to replace Biden, but others in the party will be hesitant to back the loser of the 2020 primaries, someone the party has had persistent doubts about, and the challenge of a black woman winning a presidential race in America, particularly after the Hilary Clinton fiasco in 2016.
But what if, instead, they turn to Gavin Newsom, or Josh Shapiro? Will this alienate the black voters the Democrats depend on to win elections?
More dangerously, a segment of the voting public has clearly shifted their support to the repulsive Donald Trump. Having overcome their rational hesitation to adopt him as their candidate, will they, once they have overcome those reservations, hesitate to return to the Democratic candidate? Will an embittered Kamala Harris withdraw from the campaign? Or will she accept a VP nomination with the new candidate?
I doubt we will get a really great replacement like Sherrod Brown or Sheldon Whitehouse. Getchen Witmer would be a terrific replacement. Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar would be viable. Newsom? Probably. Shapiro? Maybe.
Trump is very vulnerable to attack by a vigorous, smart opponent. The Democrats owe it to the world to find one.
If they don’t, history should be as unkind to Biden as it is now to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at least among the more sophisticated observers. He will be the man whose bungling missteps and selfish narcissism gave us the worst president in the history of the United States, again.