why removing Biden as nominee might be difficult

Headline:

Columnist says Biden will be nominee whether Democrats 'like it or not'

While some observers have suggested that Democrats may swap President Joe Biden for former First Lady Michelle Obama ahead of this year's election, Washington Examiner columnist Jeremiah Poff isn't among them.

In an op-ed piece published on Friday, Poff argued that removing Biden from the ticket is no longer an option.

Poff began by addressing the idea that a debate with former President Donald Trump on June 27 will serve as the determining factor for whether Biden goes on to become his party's nominee.

"After many incidents raising questions about his physical and mental fitness for office, the debate will offer Biden an opportunity to show that he really is up to the job and that the concerns about his mental and physical acuity are overblown," he wrote.

"But if he fails, the early date of the debate supposedly would give the Democratic Party time to replace Biden atop the ticket and avoid disaster in November," the columnist added.

However, Poff then went on to lay out "three reasons why replacing Biden at this juncture is, at worst, nearly impossible and, at best, a logistical nightmare."

He pointed to a series of deadlines, with the first being July 17, which is when the Indiana Democratic Party will select its delegates.

The second is the August 7 deadline in Ohio for each party to have their general election ballot candidate choice finalized.

For a final deadline, Poff pointed to August 19, which is when the Democratic National Convention is set to begin. Any efforts to remove Biden after this point "would spill out into the open and involve a messy soap opera that would unfold on the convention floor."

What's more, Poff stressed that the hurdles don't stop there, as anyone wishing to remove Biden must contend with the fact that there are "thousands of delegates from every state and territory who have pledged to vote for Biden."

Since "all of them were selected as delegates due to their loyalty to the president," getting rid of the president could only involve him stepping aside voluntarily.

Yet Poff stressed that even if Biden were to depart, this would only lead to another challenge: "the lack of an obvious successor." Although the most obvious answer would normally be Vice President Kamala Harris, Poff pointed out that "she is somehow more unpopular than the woefully unpopular Biden."

Replacing Harris will itself be difficult as the Democratic Party "will have to somehow justify the fact that it passed over the party's first black woman vice president in favor of another nominee."

Poff thus concluded that replacing Biden "is just not really feasible at such a late stage in the electoral calendar to put in another candidate," adding, "The Democrats are stuck with Biden — whether they like it or not."

I've long leaned slightly toward the idea that Biden won't be replaced. The Dems will do whatever they have to to drag his corpse across the finish line.