Subject: Re: Frank Luntz- on tonights Biden interview,
So do you think there is any path forward? A few months ago, you were telling conservatives on this board that the Dems can't change candidates at this late stage (and that was a few months ago...it's later now).

As I have been telling conservatives, "the Dems" can't change candidates. They still can't. There is no one in the Democratic party who gets to overrule the results of the primaries. No one can force Joe Biden not to be the nominee. It was wishful conspiracy thinking to believe that there existed some group of Democrats that "really" had the control over the nominee, not the primaries.

However, Joe Biden has always had the ability to drop out of the race. He can always choose not to be the candidate (or, you know, if he got hit by a bus and killed, he obviously would be replaced).

Is there a path forward? Partially that depends on the reality of what Biden's acuity really is. If what we saw last week was actually a shocking, "that's never ever happened before" type of event, one that was really caused by cold medicine or the international travel that he had concluded eleven days earlier (cough!), then there's a path for Biden to reassure voters that he's fit as a fiddle and possibly beat Trump. But if Biden really has declined, if there's a 20% chance (or whatever) that if you have Biden do an unscripted event in the evening that that Biden is what you might get, then there's probably not a way for Biden to win the race. There are plenty of voters that would vote for a senescent ham sandwich instead of Trump....but not enough of them. If Biden actually can't perform candidate duties consistently enough to convince voters that he's all there, he's not going to win.

Could the Democrats win the Presidency with someone other than Biden? Possibly, but very unlikely. A brand new entrant to the race with no campaign infrastructure would be at an enormous disadvantage, and I continue to think that a contested convention would create disastrous and irreparable (within the relevant time frame) fractures in the Democratic party. The only way to avoid that would be if the party rallied around Harris well before the convention (she's the only potential candidate who has at least a colorable claim for being a settled emergency back-up, rather than throwing it to the convention). But Harris has her own issues as a candidate - so although she wouldn't be starting from scratch (she's already on the ticket and part of the campaign) and might avoid bloody infighting in Chicago, she's still not necessarily going to be a strong candidate.

I think there is a path forward to make things a little better for downballot candidates. Even if his replacement is doomed, if Biden's gone it will spare most downballot Democrats from having to defend the choice to stick with him - allowing them to focus entirely on how terrible the downballot Republicans are for sticking with Trump.

But I think the odds are really good that Trump will be elected in November.