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Yeah, I really don't understand what all the discussion about Biden somehow being removed from the ticket is coming from. It can't happen. The rules are designed to make that impossible. Are the Democratic leaders/influencers calling for it trying to set themselves up to appeal to a hypothetical future nominee for 2028? Biden's already made it clear he won't step down voluntarily.
If the Democratic party loses in November, he's going down with the ship. And I guess we'll find Harris laying on a door frame in the middle of the ocean.
The rules of the Democrat Party are just made up - they're not the Constitution or even the law.
The only thing actually constraining them is deadlines to get on the ballot. But in the past, states have been quite generous about accommodating the two big parties.
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At the end of the day in politics, the rules are more like guidelines, unless there's an army enforcing them.
In 2002 the NJ Senate race had passed the nomination deadline, when incumbent Senator Torricelli was headed for a certain loss following corruption charges. The Democrats asked the New Jersey Supreme Court if they could pretty please have an exception made and the court declared an "emergency resignation exception." The Democrats replaced Torricelli on the ballot with the recently retired Senator Frank Lautenberg, who won by almost 10%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lautenberg#2002_election
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You can think of the rule-change commentariat as the IQ bell curve meme, where the stupid and the super-intelligent both approach the same conclusion while the median/normie takes the 'smarter' route that is itself implicitly not as smart as the high-IQ side.
The low-IQ end of the bell curve is the 'we have to try' commentariat, who think they need to change the candidate to win but don't realize that they don't have the mechanisms to actually do it.
The median-IQ majority is the gritting-teeth-and-crying face crowd, which know they can't change and so have to make do with Biden and are trying to urge everyone to get in line.
The high-IQ end of the bell curve is the 'we have to appear as if we're trying' maneuvers, who know that changing the candidate is impossible but are also positioning to survive the fallout when the median-IQ enablers get stuck with the blame for standing by Biden.
There's a degree of conformist-shock in the commentariat rebellion, but there's also some indications that some elements of the Democratic party as thinking much more in terms of the aftermath. Obama, for example, is very much setting himself on both sides: publicly staying on brand vocally supporting Biden, which will be remembered if Biden wins, but also implicitly endorsing (by not pushing back against) personally screened media articles calling on Biden to resign. If Biden wins, he always spoke in Biden's favor, and if Biden loses, he was not an enabler and supported the Right Side trying to raise concerns.
Now adopt that framing to other actors. One way or another, there are about to be a lot of losers from the current party-rebellion, and people aren't just taking stances on Biden for the election in and of itself, but for how it will reflect in the fallout. If, for example, Biden were to win, you can rest assured he'll take revenge on various party members who denounced him. But if he loses, people who denounced him will have significant ammo on the people who were loyal.
What we're seeing now is a lot of future positioning, as people try and angle to alternatively cover their basis, or double-down on one side or another. The 'Biden must be replaced' crowd- whether Biden is actually replaced or not- is part of a stance on which wing(s) of the party will rise or fall after this election.
Its interesting, because when you brought up the IQ meme I thought you would do the total opposite with it. So probably it doesn't apply here.
Yeah, I was expecting it to go more like this:
Low: wants Biden replaced, not knowing the rules prevent it
Mid: must support Biden because the rules prevent replacing him
High: wants Biden replaced, because rules are made by man and can be changed if extreme circumstances require it
Simply added a higher-high, of supporting Biden because the Biden will win the inner-party power struggle regardless and target the high for retaliation regardless of overall election results.
Your framing is assuming that the priority is winning the presidential election, as opposed to control of the Democratic Party.
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*loses
Good point on some of the pressures facing the people involved.
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