Probably only Joe Biden can have Joe Biden replaced atop the Democratic ticket
Biden has amassed nearly all the delegates in this year's primary, and they are bound to support him
U.S. President Joe Biden 's halting debate performance on Thursday night has led some in his own party to begin questioning whether he should be replaced on the ballot before November.
There is no evidence Biden, 81, is willing to end his campaign, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968. And it would be nearly impossible for Democrats to replace him unless he chooses to step aside.
Here's why:
Delegates are bound to Biden
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have struggled over the decades trying to find the right balance between grassroots supporters and party insiders.
Democratic rules currently mandate that the delegates Biden won in this year's primary remain bound to support him at the party's upcoming national convention unless he tells them he's leaving the race.
Biden indicated that he had no plans to do that, telling supporters in Atlanta shortly after he left the debate stage, "Let's keep going." Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt was even clearer, saying on Friday: "Of course he's not dropping out."
The conventions and their rules are controlled by the political parties. The Democratic National Committee could convene before the convention opens on Aug. 19 and change how things will work, but that isn't likely as long as Biden wants to continue seeking re-election.
The current rules read: "Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them."
Until changes ushered in after a contentious contest in 2016 between party establishment candidate Hillary Clinton and the surprisingly robust challenge of Bernie Sanders, it was theoretically possible for the some 740 superdelegates — an assortment of party insiders — to tip the balance in a first ballot convention vote
But the influence of superdelegates now only comes into play if the outcome is in doubt. With only a couple of quixotic, longshot bids to replace him, that is not the case here — Biden has amassed 3,894 delegates of a total of nearly 4,000 in this year's Democratic primary.
LISTEN l Unpacking the unprecedented early debate with CBC's Katie Simpson:
VP not an automatic pick if Biden steps aside
Vice-President Kamala Harris is Biden's running mate, but that doesn't mean she can swap in for him at the top of the ticket by default. Biden also can't decree that she replace him should he suddenly decide to leave the race.
The Democratic National Convention is being held in Chicago, but the party has announced that it will hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin. The exact date for the roll call has not yet been set.
WATCH l Biden's Medicare gaffe:
If Biden opts to abandon his re-election campaign, Harris would likely join other top Democratic candidates looking to replace him. But that would probably create a scenario where she and others end up lobbying individual state delegations at the convention for their support.
That hasn't happened for Democrats since 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson jockeyed for votes during that year's Democratic convention in Los Angeles.
In response to a much-talked about New York Times column in February about the possibility of a Biden replacement, Caitlin Jewitt, an associate political science professor at Virginia Tech, told CBC News such a situation would be "utter chaos."
Republican-run states could sue to stop replacement
In addition to the vice-president, others who had endorsed Biden in 2024 while harbouring their own presidential aspirations for future cycles include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and California Rep. Ro Khanna.
In addition to Harris, Biden faced a large number of competitors in the 2020 Democratic primary, including senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, as well as Pete Buttigieg, now Biden's transportation secretary.
In the aftermath of the debate, Harris and Newsom were some of Biden's most forceful advocates.
"You don't turn your back because of one performance! What kind of party does that?" Newsom said in an MSNBC interview before launching into Biden's legislative accomplishments since 2021.
Harris said "there's no question" Biden had a slow start in the debate, but thought he finished strongly and focused on facts, as opposed to Trump. She pointed to Biden's work in the past three years on infrastructure, and in defending the reproductive freedoms of women.
WATCH l Undecided voters watch with interest:
If Biden were to abruptly leave the race, conservative groups have suggested they will file lawsuits around the country, potentially questioning the legality of the Democratic candidate's name on the ballot. The Democrats already had trouble getting even Biden's name on the ballot in Ohio, due to an arcane set of circumstances that reflect how decentralized the U.S. election system is.
But Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, who wrote a book about the presidential nominating process and is also a member of the Democratic National Committee's rule-making arm, said that courts have consistently stayed out of political primaries as long as parties running them weren't doing anything that would contradict other constitutional rights, such as voter suppression based on race.
"This is very clear constitutionally that this is in the party's purview," Kamarck said in an interview before the debate. "The business of nominating someone to represent a political party is the business of the political party."
With files from CBC News