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As Julia said about 1,000 lines ago, I think it would be easier for Democrats to dump Biden if there were a clear viable alternative — say, a vice president who was uniformly beloved and seen as a future president in waiting. Unfortunately for Harris, that's not her. So I think Biden is staying put.

galen: Again, I do think this comes back to what happens over the next few months. Does Biden's approval rating remain at 39 percent? Does he remain down to Trump in the popular vote?

geoffrey.skelley: I do think Galen's right that this could become much more fraught if there's little change in the general election polls by, say, May. Historically, polls have at least some predictive power by then. In the next couple of months, voters will understand that Biden-Trump II is very likely happening (notwithstanding this conversation), which isn't necessarily the case right now.

nrakich: The issue for Democrats is that May will be too late. Heck, even if Biden drops out today, it's too late to have a proper contested primary.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, Nathaniel. The reality is, the candidate filing deadline has now passed in about four-fifths of primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side — contests that are worth about 88 percent of the party's national pledged delegates. That is to say, at this point no one besides Biden can win the Democratic nomination at the ballot box.

julia_azari: Right. It would have to be hammered out at the convention, which is a recipe for disaster.

nrakich: And at a contested convention, voters wouldn't get a direct say in the nominee. That makes things very fraught, especially if a contested convention passes over a Black female vice president to nominate a white male governor. The base would revolt.

As a result, I think the only even remotely viable exit ramp for Biden is if he endorses Harris on his way out. Otherwise, chaos.

galen: Yeah, I don't know about the identity politics of it all. Polls suggest that voters care much less about it than activists or the media do. But of course, activists and the media have sway.

geoffrey.skelley: In a scenario where Biden drops out, party leaders will be looking for a port in a storm. That is Harris, even if they have their own concerns about her. But age won't be one of the worries with her like it is with Biden.

galen: Yeah, as much as Democrats don't want a McGovern redux, as Julia has said, they also don't want a Hubert Humphrey redux, haha.

(For readers for whom this is too much in the nerdy weeds of presidential election history, I apologize!)

nrakich: Haha, I was just going to say … For those who aren't familiar, Humphrey won the 1968 Democratic nomination at the DNC despite not competing in any primaries and being opposed by much of the Democratic grassroots. He lost to Richard Nixon in the fall.

julia_azari: So, as a party politics scholar who has been repeatedly told by my students this semester that parties are the worst, I think there's a lesson here about why they are useful. When politics is too individually focused, it is vulnerable to the frailties of a single human, who can get old or die or have a scandal. This is why you want a robust party that can represent multiple viewpoints credibly and make decisions on behalf of the group. (And recruit viable presidential candidates.)

galen: Julia, you have set me up for something I've been mulling over and wanting to say for a while.

When people defend Biden on the issue of age, they say, \"Look at all he's done even with such limited power in Congress.\" And that is true. Biden has signed plenty of big and bipartisan legislation in ways that Trump and former President Barack Obama really didn't. And in some ways, that is a good argument for a politician working within a parliamentary system. Regardless of what you think of the individual, this person is furthering party goals. The policy comes first.

But we do not live in a parliamentary system; we live in a presidential system where the president acts as a symbol of the country and a vessel for the hopes and dreams of Americans. Biden really does not fit that mold, and he is not campaigning in a way that would spark that kind of emotional response.

Meanwhile, Trump is certainly campaigning — for better or worse — in the kind of way a presidential system demands. He'll run against his own party or platform if he wants to. It's about him. As a result, while there are plenty of policies his party wanted that he didn't achieve and he is currently charged with 91 crimes, Americans today nonetheless see him as more competent and effective than the incumbent.

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