Democrats, want to replace Biden? Start working on those delegates.

President Biden isn’t leaving his reelection campaign willingly.

Democrats should abandon their hopes that some cadre of party elders — Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer — will visit the White House and persuade Biden not to run for another term. If that sort of intervention were going to happen, it probably would have happened by now. Those figures have largely offered supportive statements since Biden’s debate debacle. Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday implying to MSNBC that Biden should reconsider his reelection bid is unlikely to move the needle much.

If Democrats want a nominee who isn’t named Joe Biden, then they need to have a delegate fight in Chicago, and they need to start preparing now.

Winning the Democratic nomination requires an estimated 1,968 pledged delegates, and Biden has won 3,896 of the 3,903 delegates who are committed to a candidate; another 36 delegates are uncommitted. At first glance, Biden has everything locked down, and there’s no way for Democrats to alter course.

Under the Democratic National Committee’s rules, “all delegates to the National Convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” But polls conducted after Biden’s terrible debate performance on June 27 have indicated that roughly half the Democratic Party, losing faith in Biden, wants someone else.

A Morning Consult survey on June 28 reported that “a 47% plurality of Democrats say Biden should be replaced as the Democratic candidate for president.” A CNN report on its poll from June 28 to 30 said, “Most Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters (56%) say the party has a better shot at the presidency with someone other than Biden, while 43% say the party stands a better chance with him.” And a Florida Atlantic University national poll on June 29 and 30 found “a split within the Democratic Party regarding U.S. President Joe Biden’s candidacy, with 40% supporting Biden as the nominee and 45% thinking he should be replaced with another Democrat.”

The number of Democrats yearning for some other option has always been high; in the summer of 2022, 75% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters told CNN’s pollster that they wanted the party to nominate someone else. But that was back when a Biden reelection campaign was theoretical. We’re about 40 days from the Democratic convention, when the decision becomes official.

Convention delegates are typically among a candidate’s staunchest supporters, but even strong Biden backers may have had their confidence shaken lately. Delegates with rising skepticism about the viability of his candidacy could plausibly argue that voting to nominate Biden without any debate or discussion of other options no longer reflects “the sentiments of those who elected them.”

There’s a separate question of whether state laws can require the Democratic delegates to vote for their initially pledged candidate on a certain number of ballots. As of 2022, according to Ballotpedia, one-third of states had such laws.

The first problem here is enforcement — would the Michigan State Police, for instance, rush to Chicago, to enforce the Michigan statute that “a national convention delegate shall be bound to vote for the presidential candidate for whom he or she designated commitment … until the end of the first ballot at the national convention”? Would any prosecutor charge those Michigan delegates for violating state law?

The second problem is whether state law can supersede the DNC’s “good conscience” rule. Who decides whom the Democratic Party nominates — the DNC or state legislatures?

Any Biden delegates who went rogue and voted for someone else would have a compelling argument — they no longer believe Biden can perform his duties and want to nominate someone else. It would be absurd to argue that state laws require delegates to vote for a particular candidate no matter what, even if that candidate had a stroke or was otherwise somehow obviously incapacitated.

Note that Charlie Spies, a former counsel for the Republican National Committee as well as former counsel to the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, argues that Biden can’t transfer his anticipated $100 million campaign war chest to Vice President Harris or any other Democrat until he’s officially the nominee. This sounds like something the lawyers would hash out, but it might give Biden an argument that he has to be nominated, even if the delegates prefer someone else.

For Biden-skeptical Democrats, this would be a steep uphill climb. By the July Fourth holiday, many of Biden’s delegates had indicated they were inclined to stick with him. But the odds of the 81-year-old Biden going through the coming weeks and months without another bad performance are not great. Biden isn’t getting any younger, and he’s not magically going to get any sharper, more articulate or energetic.

There isn’t any deus ex machina lurking that would force Biden out, short of a serious health issue. He seems adamant about not leaving, and party elders couldn’t force him out even if they tried. The only remaining option is a significant defection of Biden delegates. Even if it wasn’t apparent that a rebellion would keep him short of the total required for the nomination, a major display of delegates’ discontent might sway him in a way that sniping from a handful of congressional Democrats has not.

Which option unnerves Democrats more? The risks of a messy convention fight, or rolling the dice on one more campaign with Biden atop the ticket?

Jim Geraghty is National Review’s senior political correspondent. He wrote this for The Washington Post.