Joe Biden is unfit for office now, much less for another four years. Special Counsel Robert Hur essentially said so, even if Democrats are currently pretending that the emperor really is wearing clothes. Mark Alexander predicted in 2022 that Biden would not be the nominee. How, exactly, would that happen now?

Political analyst Jim Geraghty lays out the path.

In order for Joe Biden to not be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, either he must suffer a health issue that makes it impossible for him to serve another term as president, or he must voluntarily say he does not want to seek another term.

If Biden suffers a health issue that makes it impossible for him to serve as president now, Kamala Harris becomes president. (As for the notion that Biden’s cabinet could invoke the 25th Amendment, note the amendment is binary, like an on/off switch. Biden’s cabinet can’t declare that he is competent to handle his duties until January 20, 2025, but not beyond that date.)

Only Biden has won any Democrat delegates in the perfunctory primary, and those delegates are pledged to him. That will continue to happen as long as he stays in the race. Importantly, Geraghty notes, those delegates are “not obligated to support Kamala Harris if Biden suddenly was no longer a candidate.” He quotes Democratic National Committee rules about delegates before getting to the meat of the analysis:

On paper, this means the Biden delegates would have the option of nominating someone besides Harris, and state parties couldn’t require or force delegates to vote to nominate Harris.

Thus, if in the coming months Biden announced he would not serve a second term, all of those Biden delegates would be free to support any candidate they like.

In reality, it would be exceptionally politically difficult for a majority of those 4,672 delegates to skip over the first woman and first African-American vice president and nominate someone else. Harris, and her allies, would fight like mad to ensure she was the nominee, and if the delegates nominated a white male like California governor Gavin Newsom, the accusations of racism and sexism would erupt with volcanic fury. I don’t know if that course of action would tear the Democratic Party apart, but I know that Harris and her allies want Democrats to fear that course of action would tear the party apart.

Could the Democratic Party nominate someone besides Joe Biden or Kamala Harris to be their presidential nominee in 2024? Yes, but that would require two exceptionally unlikely events to occur: for Joe and Jill Biden to decide they don’t want to live in the White House for another four years, and for Kamala Harris to lose a floor flight at the convention.

Read the whole thing here.