I encountered this earlier today on Bluesky and addressed #1 a little bit and now I kind of want to go through the whole thing. Let’s take the idea of Biden dropping out seriously. Why not. Believe it or not, I’m pretty confident about my answers to all of this; that said, feel free to take with salt if you so desire.

I am going to attempt to address each of these questions as neutrally as I can, by the way.

Can Biden be replaced against his will?

Absolutely the fuck not, and I mean that in the strongest terms imaginable. Right now Joe Biden has 3,904 pledged delegates. Everyone else, including “undetermined,” has … 45. He needs a majority. You do the math. While “faithless electors” technically are a thing, most of these folks were picked because they are loyal, and a substantial number of them are legally bound to vote for Biden on at least the first ballot. The idea that nearly two thousand of them would vote for other people on the first ballot is beyond fantasy. It will never, ever happen. And even if this literally impossible thing were to happen, unless those nearly 2000 people chose the same person, Biden would still have a huge plurality. He would absolutely be going back after each and every delegate who had voted against him for the second ballot, and again– he just needs a majority. This just isn’t going to be a thing under any circumstances.

Can Biden drop out?

Yep. He sure can. He could also die. He can direct his delegates to vote for someone else; they don’t actually have to do what he says. He can also simply “release” them and let them vote for who they want.

What if he drops out and throws his support behind Kamala Harris?

One presumes that Harris would be nominated on the first ballot if this happened. It would not be a guarantee but I think it would be very, very likely. The process to find a vice-president would be … interesting. One thing I haven’t seen anyone talking about is Biden throwing his support behind Harris and then becoming Vice-President again. He can do that! It’s happened twice, although neither John Calhoun or George Clinton were President in between the two vice-presidencies. The Constitution only specifies that the VP has to be eligible to become President; Biden has another term of eligibility. There is no legal barrier to him becoming VP again.

What if he actually resigns the Presidency?

This would be an astonishingly bad idea, as Kamala Harris assuming the Presidency would mean that we’d lose the Vice-President and thus lose our tiebreaker in the Senate. A new Vice-President would have to be approved by both the Senate and the House. The House is controlled by the Republicans. They could barely pick a Speaker. We would almost certainly go to January 20 without a Vice-President. You know what else the Vice-President is responsible for doing? Certifying the electoral votes. Regardless of who wins, I cannot even imagine the level of fuckery that could ensue in a situation where the election is close and we don’t have anyone in the position that is supposed to certify that the votes are counted correctly. It would make January 6, 2021 look like a fun day at the beach. I don’t even want to think of it.

Biden absolutely cannot be allowed to resign the Presidency. The good news is I think he’d rather die than quit at this point.

What if he drops out and doesn’t endorse, or endorses someone other than Harris?

There has not been a contested convention for either political party during my lifetime. I believe the last contested Democratic convention was in 1968, coincidentally the year LBJ decided to not sit for another term and then Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. It … didn’t go well. I think it’s still entirely possible Harris wins on the first ballot even without an explicit endorsement. If she doesn’t, who the fuck knows what happens next.

It is probably worth pointing out that if any of the people currently getting tossed about as magical saviors replacement candidates were actually interested in the role, we’d be hearing about them trying to consolidate support behind the scenes. We haven’t, because no one is doing that.

What about a mini-primary?

That’s basically just a contested convention. As I said, one hasn’t happened in a while, but they’re hardly historically unprecedented. Nonetheless, it would be, charitably, a huge fucking mess. I’ve promised to try to be neutral so I won’t go further into that.

What about getting the winner on the ballot in all 50 states?

This, at least in theory, actually isn’t a problem. The Democrats and Republicans both have a ballot line in every state and the various territories that is currently sitting there empty waiting for an official nominee. Whoever the nominee is will be on the ballot. (*)

(*) In a normal year. I can very easily imagine legal fuckery. It would be meritless but the Supreme Court just decided that bribing them is legal and that the President is a king. Those decisions were also meritless. “Meritless” is kinda the Supreme Court’s thing right now. Typically, though, political parties are given wide leeway in determining their own nominees, and I’m not aware (I could be wrong!) of any case of a major-party nominee being seriously challenged in court for ballot access. That says, something ends up on Matthew Kacsmaryk’s desk, who the fuck knows what happens next.

Who takes the money pot?

Hahahahahahaha lol we’re all fucked.

Okay. If Harris/Whoever is the nominee, we’re good. Kamala Harris is part of the Biden/Harris ticket. She should still have access to the funds raised for their candidacy. Note, for the record, that this is the part of this explainer that I’m least confident about, but I’m still confident enough to be writing about it. Presumably they wouldn’t lose a ton of staff over this; there would be some hiccups and some rearranging and such but I don’t foresee any substantial organizational or legal issues.

If the nominee’s name is not “Kamala Harris,” though, we run into some serious shit. The Biden/Harris campaign cannot simply sign those millions and millions of dollars over to some other candidate. They can, after settling the campaign’s debts and dealing with the no doubt huge number of people who want their money back, donate the rest of it to a PAC, or an organization like the DNC, who may spend it as they see fit.

The new candidates would have to start from scratch. They would inherit some infrastructure from Biden/Harris but … Christ. Office leases would have to be renegotiated. TV time, radio, internet and print advertising is still sold … to Biden-Harris. They’d have to staff up almost completely; at the very least everyone who worked for Biden-Harris would have to be rehired, and all of this on no money, at least at first. Website infrastructure. Immense amounts of fundraising, both small-donor and massaging big donors and bundlers, a good portion of whom will probably be pissed that their person wasn’t picked. Email lists. Voter lists. Volunteers. Bank accounts. Fucking candidate scheduling. Across the entire country. All at once.

Oh, and picking a Vice-President, which would also be necessary, and would be a fucking huge mess because that type of thing typically takes months of vetting and carefully examining closets for skeletons. This would make Sarah Palin look like …

… actually, it probably still wouldn’t be as fucked up as picking Palin.

Anyway, part of the reason why we don’t hear anything about Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer getting themselves ready to run for President after the convention is that neither of them are stupid people, and they realize that building up an organization to run for the Presidency is insanely complicated and doing it in three months from nothing is fucking impossible. Neither of them wants to be the person who took the reins from Biden/Harris and then got blown the fuck out of the water because it took a month to even get staffed up.

Most of the people who are advocating for Biden to drop out have not thought about any of this. I’m pretty sure I have a good idea why; I promised to be neutral, so I won’t talk about it. Look at yesterday’s post for an idea, if you like. This is all magical, underpants-gnome thinking of the worst kind, and I would appreciate it if people acted like they have some fucking sense. Please.