Why Biden should step aside

Maybe. But in the view of this board, and a growing number of other editorial pages and Democratic officials, the greater risk lies in allowing Biden to continue as the party’s standard-bearer. Serious questions are now in play about his ability to complete the arduous work of being leader of the free world. Can he negotiate with a hostile Republican Congress, dangerous foreign powers, or even fractious rivals within his own Cabinet? The nation’s confidence has been shaken.

And can he convince the American electorate of his fitness to lead? If not, all other questions become moot. So consider the polls: The president was trailing in most of them before that disastrous debate, and now the chances that he can win over wavering independent voters, much less hold onto loyal ones, are rapidly fading.

A CNN poll this week found that 3 out of 4 voters surveyed said another Democratic Party candidate — apparently any other candidate — would do better than Biden. (To be clear, polls show that many voters would like to see Trump replaced as well.) Similarly, a new poll shows that Biden has fallen behind in the swing state of New Hampshire, where he won by a comfortable 7 points in 2020 but is now struggling to hold the support of even very liberal voters. Meanwhile, fresh reports of his recent mental lapses arrive by the day.

But while the party is demoralized, panicked, and angry, there is a ray of hope. A bevy of potential candidates — from Vice President Kamala Harris to the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California, to name only a partial list — are waiting in the wings to take on Trump. All that they need is for Biden to graciously bow out of the race and free his delegates to cast their votes for someone else at the Democratic National Convention.

For the good of the country, his party, and his legacy, Biden must do this. And soon.

That announcement would kick off a six-week race for delegates in advance of the convention, which begins in Chicago on Aug. 19. In advance, the candidates could crisscross the country to meet state delegations, raise money, give speeches and interviews, and introduce themselves to key interest groups. Sure, it might be chaotic. But it would also be damn exciting — and the Democratic Party needs something beyond fear of Trump to energize its troops.

This is also how conventions once worked, rather than the preordained, tightly orchestrated affairs of recent decades. In 1960, when Senator John F. Kennedy failed to win enough delegates during the primaries, he spent the days before the convention wooing state delegations, and his final nomination wasn’t assured until the ballots were cast on the convention floor.

That process can work again. And contrary to the idea that the party will fracture from the battle for delegates, there are many reasons to believe that, thanks to Trump, it will come together behind its candidate, united by concerns that Trump will threaten the rule of law, politicize the Department of Justice, erode abortion rights even more, abandon America’s traditional role as leader of the Western world and perhaps exit NATO altogether, impose Draconian remedies as part of his border crackdown, end any US effort to battle climate change, and spike inflation with a broad tariff regime. The former president’s repeated promises to prosecute his political enemies might also focus a few minds.

Some will raise concerns about whether Biden’s campaign war chest would be lost if Harris was not the candidate. Or that the party might be unable to get on the ballot in Ohio if it does not select its candidate until the convention. Or that a three-month general election campaign is not enough time to introduce a new candidate to the country. But election law experts say the Ohio and campaign funds problems are easily surmountable. And European nations routinely hold national elections that last only weeks. Many Americans would be happy to have one so short.

The real obstacle to any of this happening is Biden himself. He must walk away from the race on his own, something he seems disinclined to do. His wife and children are said to oppose the idea as well. But with the nation’s future at stake, this is not a decision that should be made by one family alone. This is a moment when the Democratic Party itself, never particularly good at behaving like a party, must step into the fray.

Current and former party leaders should be doing their best to persuade the president that the end of his long and grand political career is near. This means former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton; Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries; former House speaker Nancy Pelosi; and Representative James Clyburn, the man who did more than anyone to make Biden the nominee in 2020.

They all have a story they can tell the president, and the story is this: If he leaves the race now, his party will hail him as a hero. If he stays in and loses, it will be a disaster for the country. Democrats could lose both houses of Congress, removing any check on Trump’s excesses and freeing him to appoint another right-wing justice to the most conservative Supreme Court in decades. The nation would suffer and his legacy would be destroyed.

For its part, the Biden team has launched a campaign to reassure Democrats that he can still win. It began with a reasonably energetic rally in North Carolina and moved into high gear this week with a meeting with governors, the announcement of trips to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and the scheduling of an interview on Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC. These are good steps, but he should have taken them months ago to demonstrate his vitality to voters who were wavering even then. Now, they seem insufficient.

If his team really wanted to dispel doubts, they would have him do multiple interviews with reporters who have been critical of him, including from Fox News. They would have him do more campaign events that aren’t tightly controlled, without the help of a teleprompter. They would put him in public positions that demonstrate he can think on his feet.

And they would tell us more about his mental and physical health, as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has urged. They could, for instance, release more information from his latest medical exam in February, when a group of doctors proclaimed him “fit for duty” but did not release detailed information about his cognitive abilities. The campaign has continued to refuse such requests this week.

We would like to think that if they did all those things now, that Biden would pass them with flying colors. Because we firmly believe that even a weaker Biden is far superior to a vigorous Trump. But, sadly, last week’s debate makes us suspect that his campaign has largely avoided these kinds of challenges because they feared the president would fail them.

For years during the Trump administration, Democrats lambasted Republican members of Congress who refused to say publicly what they were saying privately: that Trump was unfit to be president.

We understand why Democrats are hesitant to do the same thing now to a respected president from their own party. It is partly because managing the ravages of age is not equivalent to being a dishonest and incompetent president. But it is also because they fear that questions about Biden’s fitness as a candidate will ultimately translate into questions about his fitness to serve as president. And that will only strengthen Trump’s hand.

We understand those fears — and therefore their silence. But the time for silence has passed.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.