I really hate these clickbaity titles and I hate even more that they are probably the most correct to use right now.

Short answer: yes, no, maybe.

Long answer: panicky parties are impossible to predict. Panicky, incompetent parties even more so.

So, it’s been a week and a half since the debate, has my opinion changed? Nah. Biden has again refused to step aside and no amount of ‘political pressure’ is gonna blast him out of the big chair. He doesn’t want to leave and he has incentives to stay – not the least of which being the multiple accusations of corruption. Those battles are much easier to fight from the White House than the rest home.

That brings us to the options for the Democrat Party. Short answer, they’re stuck. Long answer, they’re still stuck but they will be flailing around like a fish on a hook. Believe nothing until it actually happens and stock up on popcorn.

Unless you are a Democrat, in which case start asking serious questions about why, exactly, you support a party that pushes authoritarian policies, covers up obvious misconduct, abuses the justice system and lies not only to the other guys but to you as well? No, this is NOT politics as usual. This is your party imploding. Why are you along for the ride?

Without further ado, will the Dems use the 25th Amendment? Extremely unlikely – that’s a very dangerous path given the abundance of evidence that Democrat leadership and White House aides covered up the President’s condition. There are WAY too many videos of officials swearing Biden was just fine. Cognitive decline was observable in Biden before the 2020 election so there’s no way to argue that it was a rapid onset. If they remove him from office and Harris doesn’t win the 2024 election, the criminal and congressional investigations will be brutal and unstoppable.

This, kiddies, is why you play nice when you are in power. If you don’t, when you lose power no one is going to play nice with you. If the Dems remove Biden, more than a few of them will be facing jail time within a few years.

Does anyone think Trump will call off the DOJ after having it weaponized against him? No? Good, you get the gold star.

Can Harris win the 2024 election? She couldn’t win a primary in 2020 and her own party’s leadership wants anyone else. Shy of a literal miracle, no, she can’t win.

Will the Dems remove Biden at the convention? Again, extremely unlikely. On the bright side, they wouldn’t have the same legal issues as acutely dangling over their heads but that leaves Biden in office while they are trying to defeat Trump. Gee, Biden wouldn’t take it personally and undermine the Democrat efforts, would he?

Sorry, sorry, I forget how acidic dripping sarcasm can be. I’ve got some old shoes you can wear home.

Even if Biden plays nice over the election – I am literally having trouble typing or saying that with a straight face – he’s got nearly five months to mangle every Democrat effort. He’s already dragged his less than reputable son into the White House. Biden may not be at the top of his game but he’s played long enough to know who to trust to help him play wrecking ball.

But, but his legacy!

Biden’s legacy is a failed presidency and a backstabbing from his party. If anything, dismantling all the crap his office has done over the last three years might just improve his legacy. At the very least, it gives him the satisfaction of revenge on the party.

Seriously, Biden has no reason to play nice if the Dems backstab him this final time. Eventually, the few Dems left in leadership with cognitive function are going to realize that Biden has a ton more leverage than they do. Removing Biden makes the down ballot happier but it likely destroys both the leadership’s positions and the party as a whole.

Can the Dems remove him at the convention? Theoretically, yes; practically, no. They’d have to get the majority of his delegates to go rogue. These are the same delegates they have been browbeating into submission for the last decade and a half. The first round is critical and I just don’t see more than half, let alone the three quarters they’d need, of Biden’s delegates becoming faithless. If he wins that first round, the nomination is his.

Bear in mind, it’s not enough that his delegates abandon him. Those same delegates have to coalesce around an unelected candidate. Harris is the only one with any hope of stealing those delegates since she’s on the ticket with Biden. More than half have to betray Biden for Harris in order for that to work. If not Harris, then they’ll need a lot more faithless delegates in order to get a majority both for a new candidate and over the majority Biden already has.

Dems really don’t do math all that well.

They need a replacement candidate yesterday and the whole party has to agree on that person. Harris is the only one with legitimacy and any real likelihood of stealing the nomination. But she can’t win the election. Michele Obama might be able to win the election (I doubt it) but she has zero legitimacy and can’t steal the nomination. The convention would fracture.

The fireworks would be fun to watch but the Dems would come out of their convention so badly damaged that they’d not only lose the presidency, but both houses as well. The infighting over whose fault that was would finish off what little was left of the Democrat Party and they’d be in no position to fight as Republicans started a wave of investigations and prosecutions.

If the Democrats were rational, they’d just take the loss and the lumps, rebuild their party and come back to fight another day. They haven’t behaved rationally in a decade. This is where the maybe comes in.

Are they stupid enough to try to remove Biden anyway? I suspect so given that they are themselves keeping the issue about Biden’s competence in the news with repeated and escalating calls for him to step aside. That’s pure panic. They have to know there’s no amount of hollering that will get him to leave. Eventually, as in give it another week or two, the Democrats running down ballot are going to realize that they aren’t maybe doomed, they are fully doomed if they can’t get Biden out.

That’s when they will really start breaking ranks. I don’t mean in public. They are going to start fighting the leadership behind closed doors until it finally hits the airwaves a week or two later. There’s already evidence of leadership attempting to quell the dissent. But they have little to offer so by the time of the convention, there’s going to be a significant faction wanting to oust Biden.

But it’s unlikely to be unified. The convention will make the 1968 Democrat Convention look like a church picnic. Floor fight extravaganza!

If – and it’s a big if – they can get to a second round of voting, the superdelegates will be able to vote. Trouble with that is the Dems have got to be rallying around a single candidate which infighting makes unlikely. Instead of settling the matter, the second round could simply explode.

Unlikely, but potentially hilarious, would be a convention that ends with no presidential candidate. It can happen if the convention devolves but it’s extremely unlikely.

Then again, so is having a major party electing a dementia patient.

Well, if the Dems are stuck or do get another candidate, do they stand a chance in the general election?

Since Trump isn’t friends with the Clintons, probably not.

Michele Obama has name recognition and a lot of good will, but no political chops. She’d obviously be a puppet for her husband. The convention might survive that but it’s going to get her slaughtered in the general election. There’s no where near enough time to overcome that limitation. She would damage her image and her husband’s legacy.

Assuming the insane base would accept her. That’s the other problem the Dems face; their base wants leftist policies when the party needs to be playing to the center. If the candidate isn’t far enough left they can’t get the nomination and if they aren’t centered enough they can’t get elected.

That is part of what destroyed Biden’s chances. He emerged in the 2020 primaries because he was the least objectionable and could run more to the center. His presidency has been a leftist farce. He doesn’t have the centrist chops to get re-elected.

Despite what you’ve heard, the US remains very solidly centrist. The Center may shift somewhat left and right over time but Americans are very much a united, centrist set of folks. Candidates running too far left or right don’t get elected. Parties that don’t reflect the actual center don’t get their candidates elected.

American Politics 101. Amazing how parties forget this time after time.

That’s about it. Unless the Democrats do something even more stupid, they are stuck with Biden and will lose the Presidency. They don’t seem coherent enough to put real effort into preserving the down ballot races although a few large donors are moving that way. If they don’t quickly get their act together they are going to suffer massive losses in both the House and Senate. In all likelihood, they’ll flail around a while longer and destroy themselves.

The rest of us will enjoy the fireworks from WAY over there. The Democrat idiots can’t tell fireworks from a powder keg.

Either way, they will probably blow themselves up.