For four basic reasons, one of them named Kamala.
A popular theory among conservatives is that Democrats are luring Republicans into a trap: Once the GOP has committed to the roundly unpopular Donald Trump, whose case for returning to the Oval Office is based entirely upon being less terrible and decrepit than the arguably even-more-unpopular incumbent Joe Biden, the Democrats will turn around and yank Biden off the ballot, substitute somebody with less baggage, and trounce Trump.
Fear of this happening is grounded in some bad historical memories. Republicans recall the 2002 New Jersey Senate race when Doug Forrester led scandal-tarred incumbent Bob Torricelli in multiple polls before Torricelli withdrew on September 30, and the Democrats pulled out the race by slotting in former senator Frank Lautenberg. (A substitution from necessity that same fall worked less well in Minnesota, where Paul Wellstone was killed in an October 25 plane crash and Democrats drafted the retired Walter Mondale, who lost to Norm Coleman.) By contrast, when Republicans have nominated a disaster of a candidate, whether it be Todd Akin or Doug Mastriano, there is no exit. More recently, the Democratic establishment was able to coordinate in 2020 what Republicans never could in 2016 or this year: lean on Joe Biden’s rivals Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to withdraw simultaneously from the presidential race in order to consolidate the forces opposed to a populist Bernie Sanders nomination.
It’s true that a lot of professional Democrats and ordinary Democratic voters would love to ditch Biden. Polls often show that a majority of the party’s voters prefer that he not run again, and basically everybody who works in political reporting will tell you that they hear a lot of hair-pulling anxiety from Democrats behind the scenes about Biden’s visible age and poor public approval. So, I don’t doubt that some influential people have kicked around the possibility. And because it’s good copy, it will remain an item of speculation for bored political writers if we are all forced to endure the dreadful prospect of a Trump–Biden rematch. But there are four basic reasons why it won’t happen:
First, there’s no mechanism to make it happen. Recall that Torricelli stepped aside of his own volition. Biden himself has shown no inclination to quit, and is likely to do so only if he suffers a really grave health incident (not that improbable an event at his age, but hardly a certainty). Nobody in the party (either party, really) has the kind of pull to do what Barry Goldwater, Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott, and House Republican leader John Rhodes did in 1974 in convincing a sitting president of their own party to step aside. So, somebody else would have to organize and lead an effort to force Biden out. Who would do that? Bill Clinton? Barack Obama? Chuck Schumer? Nancy Pelosi? Hakeem Jeffries? Even if several of those party grandees joined forces, how would they go about it? There’s nobody else besides Congressman Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson competing in the primaries, so nearly all the pledged delegates awarded during those primaries will be sworn to support Biden, and the bulk of those will be Biden loyalists. Because of rules changes in 2020, those pledged delegates make up 3,945 of the 4,692 delegates at the Democratic convention; the 747 remaining “superdelegates” make up just 16 percent of the total. Even if the superdelegates were unanimous, that’s not nearly enough to stage an intra-party coup.
Second, nobody wants Kamala Harris. Harris is universally recognized to be a political liability who isn’t up to the presidency. Her approval ratings have been worse than Biden’s for their entire term in office. She had consistently bled staff and suffered endless negative leaks, signs that she not only is not respected but that people who work for her don’t see her as a ticket to the presidency even as the break-glass option for an 81-year-old man. Harris can’t be fired for the same identity-politics reasons that she got the job in the first place, but that doesn’t mean anybody, even in the Democratic Party, is daft enough to want her as the only thing standing between them and a second Trump term.
Third, there’s no consensus on who would replace Biden. The 2020 choreographed withdrawal of Klobuchar and Buttigieg was only possible because everybody knew that one man (Biden) would benefit, they could live with him, and they thought (erroneously) that at 77 years old, he would block the path for others in the party only for four years. Now, there are a lot of ambitious Democrats itching to make their run in 2028, and a number of them have influential enemies. It would be exceptionally hard to get unanimity on parachuting in a candidate who, if successful in 2024, would likely put the presidency out of reach for any other Democrat until 2032. About the only eligible figure who could conceivably unite the party is Michelle Obama, and even she would face some of that resistance — plus, she has generally seemed uninterested in being a candidate for office in her own right, and may be enjoying the cushy post-presidential life too much to return to the fray.
Fourth, the parties have internalized the idea that you never, ever, ever abandon an incumbent. That wasn’t always the case: There were major internal rebellions against Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Jimmy Carter in 1980, with the latter two being led by figures of great prominence within their parties (Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy, respectively). The delegation that told Nixon to go was headed by the party’s most senior figures. But the lesson of 1968, 1974, 1976, 1980, and 1992 was that a divided party that won’t stand by its leader is bound to pay a terrible price at the polls. The turning point was the 1998–99 impeachment of Bill Clinton, when Democrats closed the tightest of ranks around their scandal-stained president. Not a single Senate Democrat voted to convict Clinton. Al Gore led a pep rally for Clinton on the White House lawn when Clinton was impeached. Only five House Democrats had voted to impeach Clinton; three switched parties, and one retired and later served in the Bush administration, the lone exception being conservative Texas Democrat Charles Stenholm. Democrats lost the White House in 2000, but they were probably due to; they did better than expected in the congressional elections in 1998 and 2000. Both parties have learned the lesson ever since that there is no price too high to pay for staying unified behind an incumbent leader. There is no sign that Democrats are about to abruptly unlearn that lesson now.
They may want to dump Biden, but without a drastic health event, they’re stuck with him.