There's Neither A Plan A Nor A Plan B

The problem nobody wants to face is twofold: first, JD Vance as Trump's running mate is stepping right into the role Nixon played for Eisenhower and Agnew played for Nixon, the low-road campaigner, and he's asking the important question:

If Joe Biden doesn't have the cognitive function to run for re-election, then he certainly doesn't have the cognitive function to remain as Commander-In-Chief.

How can any Dem pushing him to drop out of the presidential race, argue in good faith that he should stay on as POTUS?

— JD Vance (@JDVance1) July 19, 2024

But the second horn of the dilemma is Kamala:

We reported on Friday that Kamala Harris was going to have a conference call with big Democrat donors. The meeting was put together on short notice. However, at the time of the report, it was not clear what message she was going to deliver to them.

. . . We now have details about the call.

According to the New York Times, the call included roughly 300 donors, and "several listeners said they found the meeting overall to be of little value and even, at times, condescending, believing that the message ignored donors’ legitimate concerns about the Biden-led ticket."

Kamala Harris reportedly spoke for just over five minutes via video, focused on criticizing Donald Trump for his convention speech, and tried to link him to Project 2025. She only briefly mentioned Joe Biden but did not take questions.

. . . after Harris finished speaking, one participant, who was accidentally unmuted, described the call as “ludicrous.”

So on one hand, there's a genuine constitutional crisis, with the president suffering from severe cognitive issues, while his shallow and entitled wife, his crackhead son, and his wife's chief of staff, the Rasputin-like Anthony Bernal, appear to be running the country on his behalf. On the other, if he steps down or is removed due to incapacity, his successor is Kamala, who is probably worse -- but she's almost certainly incapable of organizing a majority of the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, much less marshaling two-thirds of both houses of Congress to sustain it, which only she can constitutionally do.

So if the 25th Amendment is ruled out, which as a practical matter it must surely be, the only other option is for Joe himself to "step aside", "pass the torch", or however it can be delicately put, but again, if he resigns the presidency at any time before Inauguration Day 2025, Kamala is president, and we're in the same pickle. So for the Democrats, the only conceivable option is for Joe to withdraw his candidacy but remain in office, while the August Democrat convention somehow replaces Kamala as the candidate. But even then, we're faced with Sen Vance's point, Joe's still president until January.

And so far, Joe is showing no sign he's going to "step aside" or "pass the torch".

The White House and the Biden campaign have denied that he is about to drop out. “Absolutely, the president is in this race,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, one of the president’s favorite shows and a regular venue for Democrats speaking to other Democrats. “You’ve heard him say that time and time again.”

But at the same link,

“We have to cauterize this wound right now, and the sooner we can do it, the better,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., who has not publicly called for the president to step aside.

Er, cauterize it how? Per Norman Ornstein, a PBS News Hour regular, at the LA Times,

For many members of Congress and others sophisticated about politics, a wide-open nominating convention in Chicago in four weeks is the best way to come up with a dream ticket — Whitmer-Warnock seems to be the one mentioned most. At minimum, they want to have a contest, an open process that yields the nominee. To some, if Kamala Harris prevails in that setting, directly vanquishing other rivals, it would bolster her candidacy. And the excitement of a wide-open convention would give the Democratic ticket the jump start it needs.

But that still relies on Joe "passing the torch". and the longer he takes to make up his mind to pass it, the less the time available to rig the "open convention", which of course is just a polite way of saying finesse Kamala out of the running. And that is the only tine Ornstein mentions the K-word at all in an essaay that brings up figures from Adlai Stevenson to Barry Goldwater. Nor does he have any sort of concrete path for doing this -- all he can suggest is Whitmer-Warnock, but according to the New York Times, Whitmer herself is not on board:

She said no. The speculation is “a distraction more than anything,” she said. “I don't like seeing my name in articles like that because I'm totally focused on governing and campaigning” for the existing ticket of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Oddly, Ornstein mentions election cycles from 1952 to 1964 to 1968 to 1976 to 1980, but the one he leaves out is 1972, which I've long said is the one that most closely resembles this year. An "open convention" would likely be much like that year's Democrat convention, with the nominee, McGovern, consistently behind in the polls and his running mate forced to withdraw due to questions about his mental capacity:

The convention nominated Senator George McGovern of South Dakota for president and Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri for vice president. Eagleton withdrew from the race just 19 days later after it was disclosed that he had previously undergone mental health treatment, including electroshock therapy, and he was replaced on the ballot by Sargent Shriver of Maryland, a Kennedy in-law.

The convention, which has been described as "a disastrous start to the general election campaign", was one of the most unusual—perhaps the most contentious in the history of the Democratic Party since 1924—with sessions beginning in the early evening and lasting until sunrise the next morning. Previously excluded political activists gained influence at the expense of elected officials and traditional core Democratic constituencies such as organized labor. A protracted vice presidential nominating process delayed McGovern's acceptance speech (which he considered "the best speech of his life") until 2:48 a.m.—after most television viewers had gone to bed.

The fact is that if Joe "steps aside" in whichever way, Harris is the likely nominee, which opens the same contentious question that dominated the 1972 convention: McGovern was a certain loser, and no Democrat with a political future wanted to end his career as McGovern's running mate, least of all Ted Kennedy. But a long list of other choices also declined, and Eagleton was a last expedient of desperatiom. Very few commentators so far have mentioned this problem if Kamala becomes the nominee: no other Democrat with a political future is going to sign on as the sacrificial lamb on that ticket, either.

Ornstein concludes,

There is no sugarcoating the mess Democrats find themselves in right now. But they need to keep it from getting even messier, and soon.

Yes, but how? There's neither a plan A, nor a Plan B, nor. . .