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I continue to think Biden is more likely than not to hold on (and probably lose).
The easiest and cleanest way for democrats to remove him is for him to willingly step down. So far he has been steadfast in refusing to do so. I've heard some wishcasting that "well of course he's going to dig in his heels until the moment he doesn't" still thinking pressure on him will prevail. I don't believe it will. Politicians in general are very self centered and egotistical, and I've seen nothing to indicate Biden is an exception.
As you say, the next step in escalation is for Democrats to take him on at the convention. He's clearly thought ahead that far and is openly daring someone to try it. So far no one has thrown their hat in the ring, not even Dean Phillips. Biden is signaling that this option will be a real fight, it will be messy, and he will damage whoever comes for him as much as possible. He also starts with a big advantage given that almost all the delegates are pledged to him. The "good conscience" clause in their pledge is a loophole that could be exploited if enough people want to exploit it... but will they?
My expectation at this stage is that no one actually challenges, and Biden is coronated. Taking him on is a highly risky option - if you fail and Biden loses some people will blame you for the loss, potentially killing your future prospects. If you take him on and he wins that's even worse - now the President has a very personal grudge against you.
He's still not completely out of the woods if he gets through the convention - there's still the 25th Amendment option. But the convention is probably the biggest point of vulnerability left and if he survives that he probably survives to November.
Also if you provoke an open nomination and you personally don't get it, it's likely to torpedo your personal chances of being President if that nominee ends up winning the election since they'll likely get to run twice at which point it's 2032 and your political ambitions are probably fucked.
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding the american system, but rebelling at the convention does not actually directly impact Biden's chances at the general election, right? At most indirectly since it makes the democrats look chaotic.
But the popular impression & even the mainstream media is sufficiently critical of Biden at this point that I think there is a good chance that if someone already sympathetic challenges Biden, and Biden wins the convention anyway, but then proceeds to lose the general election, that person will get a large boost in popularity and media pieces about "if only so-and-so had won the convention, everything would have been different". It might even be better for the person than winning the convention outright, since no potential democratic nominee has a >50% chance of beating trump. Better make a good impression now and then fight against someone else in the next election.
Chaos at the convention is what would impact the general election prospects, as the convention is where the wings of the Democratic Party come together to commit to a choice, and a chaotic convention means that there are not only winners, but losers, and losers who are angered or just unmotivated to come back to the polls on election day have- in this context- a real impact on the general election.
Biden's election prospects hinges on him outperforming his polling in multiple key battleground states, where any decline in the Democratic base turnout would be fatal. This is why the pro-Palestinian wing on the party was able to influence various aspects of Biden's policy towards the Israel-Hamas conflict, as Biden was naturally inclined/desired to be even more pro-Israel, but the pro-Palestinian wing was threatening to decrease turnout if they didn't get... well, they didn't get what they wanted, but they got concessions in the form of Biden pressing the Israelis to shape their operations.
A contested convention is that, but at a larger scale. Given that the most loyal part of Biden's democratic party base / his closest allies are the African-American wing of the party, anyone overthrowing him is also overthrowing the position his faction has in the party, and the Party mathematically can't win in as many places as it needs to without the African-American wing.
The issue is that the mainstream media doesn't control the Democratic party apparatus- the Biden-Obama wing does, and they and their allies will close institutional doors / donor venues / primary the people who broke ranks with the party, in favor of political allies and partners who didn't. We've already seen this within the Democratic Party just over the Israel-Hamas War, as the (allied to the Biden Wing) AIPAC-wing of the Democratic Party has been primarying the pro-Palestinian wing, including notable members of The Squad, who have repeatedly been oppositional to Biden and attenmpted to leverage electoral turnout as political blackmail.
You also saw this in the Republican context of the last decade. When Trump started to win, there was a substantial part of the wing, the Never-Trumpers, who were sufficiently critical of Trump to challenge, get tons of media support, and boosts in popularity. They are practically extinct, not because they aren't popular with a great many people, but because the people whose approval they sought were not the ones who mattered for maintaining a stake in the Republican Party political machine.
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No direct impact, sure, but if some higher-ups in the party wanted a non-Biden scapegoat to punish then a convention challenger would be the obvious choice.
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He... kind of said that it would be OK with him if they did, in his 'big boy' press conference today. It was a little hard to parse, but he did use the words 'of course they can' -- so I guess he's sort of blessed an open convention? (unless of course he's senile and can't articulate his thoughts properly!)
Is it just me or does this "good conscience" clause talk really remind anyone else of the "regularly given" clause talk back in 2020? Of course, because the script writers for reality are so stinking good at their jobs, the partisan valence is somewhat switched.
It certainly could, in theory, result in the convention ending in a lawsuit by Biden trying to force delegates to vote for him.
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