Mark Davis: Can age really push Biden off 2024 ballot? Here’s how it could happen | Opinion

The front half of 2024 was supposed to be a political scrum to determine which Republican would oppose President Joe Biden in November. As the primaries roll forward, the question has shifted to who will be on the ballot in November against Donald Trump.

With a certain victory in South Carolina this coming weekend and others sure to follow on the Republican primary slate, even a wave of courtroom challenges seems unlikely to block Trump’s nomination in July at the Republican convention in Milwaukee.

But when Democrats gather in Chicago the following month, will the Biden coronation actually happen? That likelihood has taken some hits. A special counsel report identifying him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” gave fresh fuel to fires of concern that were already smoldering among Democrats.

Any objective assessment of Biden’s cognitive faculties must contain serious doubts about his ability to coherently complete his current term, much less a second that would stretch torturously until January 2029. Republicans have made a sport out of daily attention to his decline, but it is Democrats who must take it seriously, since their fate rests in his diminished capacities. If the Biden re-election push is growing harder to take seriously across party lines, it’s worth at least outlining a plausible path toward an alternative.

But what is that path? The Democratic Party has cleared an avenue for Biden free of pesky potential rivals. Barring some cataclysmic development, he will easily rack up the necessary delegates to accept the nomination this summer. Only two events could intervene: his willful exit from the race or removal via the 25th Amendment.

The constitutional hook seems unlikely. In short, it would involve Vice President Kamala Harris and a majority of the 15-member Cabinet declaring Biden “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Biden could then assert, in essence, “no problem, I’m fine.” If Harris and eight Cabinet officials double down, Congress would settle the matter, with two-thirds of both houses required to remove the president.

The math would be rife with intrigue. Are there Democrats who would vote to remove Biden in the hope of a more robust nominee? Would some Republicans vote to keep him to maintain a promising November matchup? We’re not likely to find out. If developments appear ready to roll toward such a cliff, with even a hint of a congressional tally sufficient for his ouster, wrenching conversations behind the scenes would likely lead to an address in which he simply informs us he has changed his mind about running, as Lyndon Baines Johnson did in 1968.

We could see such a speech under far less dramatic circumstances. Just as Republican heavyweights imposed on Richard Nixon the irreversible desperation of his plight in 1974, key Democrats may somehow make Biden realize that his prospects for re-election are as bleak as his chances of successfully navigating a second term.

That will be quite the sales job in view of the complete absence of evidence that the Biden campaign is even considering an exit. But if speculation paints a picture of a White House run by unseen hands in view of a declining president, what if the figures enjoying their time at the actual levers of power are unwilling to step aside in this grand ballet for the greater good?

This enters the territory of a pulpy movie script, but if Biden is to be sidelined, something surreptitious would necessarily lead to that moment. Perhaps it would be a drama that unfolds at the August convention, featuring a free-for-all among delegates as Biden withdraws at the last minute. Who would be their new champion, unleashed for a furious dash toward an election less than eighty days away? California Gov. Gavin Newsom offers a deeper set of campaign skills than Harris, but are there tricky optics in leapfrogging a woman of color to anoint a white man?

The fantasists’ favorite scenario, a Michelle Obama candidacy, would spare such tensions, but she is unlikely to trade the wealth and latitudes of private life for the meat-grinder of a campaign and the burdens of governing.

So if Biden seems entrenched and the storylines of his possible replacement seem fraught with improbabilities, it may well be that, saddled with a teetering political fate, Biden is nonetheless likely to face Trump in the rematch so many polls say we don’t want.

But while actual voters will elevate Trump to his nomination, Biden’s fate can be shaped by those close to him who may describe the valor of stepping into the strike zone and taking one for the team. It is impossible to know whether that would be family members or party power brokers, but anxious Democrats and curious Republicans have eyes peeled for the slightest step in that direction.

Mark Davis hosts a morning radio show in Dallas-Fort Worth on 660-AM and at 660amtheanswer.com. Follow him on X: @markdavis .

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