It might surprise many Democrats to learn that President Joe Biden could be thrown off the ticket by delegates at the Democratic convention in August. In fact, he could even drop out after the convention, and the party could replace him.

These scenarios may seem remote for now. But the Democratic Party has procedures in place to address them. And perhaps nobody knows them better than Elaine Kamarck.

A longtime member of the DNC’s rules committee and a scholar at the centrist Brookings Institution, Kamarck served as Walter Mondale’s director of delegate selection, as a senior adviser to Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and as a member of Bill Clinton’s White House staff. She’s also a 10-time DNC delegate, and literally wrote the book on how primaries and conventions work.

In an interview with the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, Kamarck laid out how Democrats would actually go about replacing Biden at the convention if they wanted to, and why she’s not particularly worried about how it would unfold.

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President Joe Biden didn’t entirely stumble at his high-stakes NATO press conference on Thursday — but his performance and continuing defiance to stepping aside has frozen Democrats in place once again over the president’s embattled candidacy against Donald Trump.

Another senior Democrat, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, kept the door open to Biden changing his mind, while urging an end to the unrelenting trickle of Hill Democrats opposed to his bid. Another new poll shows that Biden and Trump remain neck-and-neck — though Democratic replacements didn’t fare better. And Biden’s campaign swings through Michigan, Nevada, and Texas will keep the attention on him and any potential flubs — while a Monday interview with NBC will provide counterprogramming to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Two weeks out from a debate that upended the 2024 presidential race, Biden continues to evade a fatal number of defections from elected officials and voters concerned about his stamina and mental acuity. But in the days to come after Biden’s NATO press conference, where he demonstrated his foreign policy chops but confused his vice president with Trump, Democrats are likely to keep questioning whether this new phase of the campaign is tenable, amid growing fears of losing the White House — and Congress — in November.

Some Democrats, like Clyburn, signaled that conversations over Biden’s physical and cognitive viability should end, urging the party to focus on the president’s record and opponent.

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President Joe Biden, his reelection bid imperiled by his own party, defiantly declared Thursday in a press conference-turned-referendum on his candidacy that he is still the “best person” to defeat Donald Trump.

In his first solo news conference since November — and with Washington on edge — the 81-year-old Biden forcefully dismissed multiple questions about fellow Democrats declaring that he was no longer up for the rigors of the campaign and should abandon his reelection bid.

"If I slow down and can't get the job done, that's a sign I shouldn't be doing it,” he said, “but there's no indication of that yet, none."

“I’m just going to keep moving,” added Biden, saying it’s “not unusual” for lawmakers to worry about the top of the ticket, but there’s “a long way to go in the campaign.”

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House Democrats anguished over President Joe Biden’s spiral are consumed by one question: Can anything save their chances of flipping the House?

So far only three endangered Democrats have publicly called for Biden to leave the presidential race. But behind the scenes, the dozens of battleground members and candidates whose races will determine the House majority are in a “hair-on-fire” level of panic, in the words of one House aide.

Battleground members have placed urgent calls to leadership and Biden’s team, commissioned new polls back home and even mulled sending a letter to Biden himself, according to more than a dozen lawmakers, aides and operatives who work on competitive congressional races.

And one group of battleground Democrats even told House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries this week that Vice President Kamala Harris would be a better nominee in their districts than Biden, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

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HOLLAND, Michigan — When California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at a barbecue in Michigan to rally nervous Democrats behind President Joe Biden's candidacy, it felt a lot like a Newsom campaign event.

Asked about minimum wage in nearby Chicago, the Democratic governor and possible future presidential contender spoke about how he handled the issue in California — then snapped back to the present and touted Biden's record on labor.

"It's so important that we focus on workers and so important we focus on wages, and it's so important that we have a president that gets it,” Newsom said.

The scene highlighted the awkward but obvious dance unfolding at a transitional moment for ambitious Democrats ahead of what could be either a mini-primary before the convention or a longer run-up to 2028. Whatever happens at the top of this year’s ticket, Biden’s political crisis has put an early spotlight on the party’s next presidential contest.

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DORAL, Florida — Former President Donald Trump repeatedly name-dropped Sen. Marco Rubio throughout his rally here on Tuesday night, leaving the crowd in suspense over who he’d pick as running mate — while also seemingly toying with the vice presidential hopeful.

Trump pulled the rumors surrounding his running mate into the open early in his 75-minute speech. “They’ll probably be thinking that I’ll be announcing Rubio as my vice president,” he said about the journalists gathered to cover the rally, “because that’s a lot of press.” Trump, who withheld naming his running mate, then moved on to a rant about President Joe Biden and the economy.

At another point in his speech, Trump asked the Florida Republican senator whether he’d support his proposal to remove taxes from tips before teasing the senator with, “you may or not be there to vote for it — but you’ll be involved.” He later talked about his closeness to Rubio, acknowledging that during the 2016 presidential race “we had a vicious campaign for a while,” before introducing all the members of the Florida GOP congressional delegation and state lawmakers who attended. It is, in a way, classic Trump: trying to drum up drama for the sake of attention, while demanding fealty from those who hope to advance their political careers on his coattails.

Rubio is reportedly on the vice presidential short list, one of the last big decisions that Trump has to announce before being officially designated as the party’s nominee at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week. Also thought to be at the top of the list are Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

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Vice President Kamala Harris went on the offensive Tuesday against Donald Trump, making a fiery attack on his plans for a second term as the Democratic Party fights over whether her running mate should stay atop the ticket.

Harris, speaking at a campaign event in Las Vegas, laid out the Democratic case against Trump as a tarnished candidate who will adopt far-right policies outlined in the Project 2025 blueprint drafted by his allies.

“Someone who vilifies immigrants, who promotes xenophobia, someone who stokes hate should never again have the chance to stand behind a microphone and the seal of the president of the United States,” Harris said at a gathering of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.

Her appearance reflected her dual and perhaps awkward role as President Joe Biden’s leading advocate — and the person among the most likely to replace him if steps down amid increasing doubts about his ability to remain a viable candidate.

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A top Democratic pollster has a new survey showing President Joe Biden still in contention against Donald Trump, but at further risk of losing the election — with other leading Democrats now surging ahead.

The national poll, conducted and commissioned by the firm Bendixen & Amandi after Biden’s politically disastrous debate and shared exclusively with POLITICO, found Biden trailing Trump, 42 percent to 43 percent.

Of the 86 percent of likely voters who watched all or part of the debate, just 29 percent said Biden has the mental capacity and physical stamina to serve another four-year term, compared with 61 percent who said he does not. Only 33 percent said he should continue as the Democratic nominee, versus 52 percent who believe he should not. And just half of Democrats said Biden should be the party’s nominee or is mentally and physically fit to serve out another term.

Vice President Kamala Harris is now running ahead of Trump, 42 percent to 41 percent, the survey found. And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 nominee who is not being seriously discussed as a candidate by voters anxious about Biden’s chances, is slightly ahead of Harris. Clinton leads Trump 43 percent to 41 percent.

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NEW ORLEANS — Sitting on a panel here at Essence Fest, an annual gathering of Black leaders, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) brought the crowd alive Saturday with a declaration: “It ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate — it’s going to be Biden.”

More significant may have been the private forum Waters used to defend the president a day earlier. On a conference call Friday with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the 85-year-old House veteran urged the lawmakers to stand with Joe Biden, sending an implied but unmistakable message to her younger colleagues not to waver, a participant on the call told me.

As the president fights for his political life this week, and calls grow from party leaders that he withdraw his candidacy, he’s counting on the support of African American Democrats and his union allies as his last line of defense. It’s a playbook Biden has turned to in the past, portraying his detractors as mostly elite white liberals who are out of step with the more diverse and working-class grassroots of the party. That’s what propelled his nomination after a string of setbacks in 2020.

It’s his only path to survival now.

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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said President Joe Biden’s interview with ABC News did not assuage concerns about his continued ability to defeat former President Donald Trump and urged the incumbent to seek outside input on whether to continue his reelection bid.

The comments, made to NBC’s "Meet the Press," are hardly a vote of confidence from one of the most vigorous prosecutors of Trump’s conduct during his presidency and the likely next senator from California.

“Given Joe Biden's incredible record — given Donald Trump's terrible record — he should be mopping the floor with Donald Trump,” Schiff said. “It should not be even close. And there's only one reason it is close, and that's the president's age.”

Schiff noted the president’s debate performance “rightfully raised questions among the American people about whether the President has the vigor to defeat Donald Trump,��� calling the election “existential” for the future of U.S. democracy.

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A defiant Joe Biden had laughed Friday at the idea that his top congressional allies would convince him to drop out of the presidential race.

“They’re not gonna do that,” he told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi? He’d already talked to all of them, he said.

And indeed, there was no such public call Saturday from those figures — no raising of questions, no airing of concerns.

Instead, there was silence. Including, conspicuously, from Schumer and Jeffries.

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A pervasive sense of fear and uncertainty about President Joe Biden’s electoral prospects has taken hold among the very Democratic delegates poised to nominate him — even among the many who say they still back him. Some are going so far as to say he should step aside.

One week after Biden’s faceplant in the debate, rank-and-file delegates to the Democratic National Convention insist they are still largely supportive of the president, according to interviews with more than three dozen of them. But they are also grimly shaken — far less confident in the presumptive nominee than they were just a week ago. And in the unlikely scenario he does, there is confusion both about how they would approach the nominating convention next month and who they would coalesce around instead.

Some delegates say they are eager to support Vice President Kamala Harris as an alternative and are hopeful that Biden will make way for her. But others are not sold on Harris and are open to a range of other Democratic prospects instead.

“After watching the debate, I don't feel like he's up to the task for four more years, and I think we need to be electing someone who can serve in that capacity for a full term,” said Marilyn Burgess, a Democratic delegate from Harris County, Texas, where she is the county clerk. “I hope he will consider withdrawing and releasing his delegates if he's on the ballot … I’m his delegate, and I'm going to vote for him, but I think it's time to look at alternatives and to not just accept that it's a done deal.”

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A handful more top Democrats on Wednesday questioned Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate — and while there’s no flood of defections, several are publicly saying time is running out for the president to decide the future of his campaign.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he would support a “mini-primary” ahead of the August convention to decide the nominee if Biden steps aside, while Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) called Vice President Kamala Harris the “obvious choice” for the top of the ticket if he does. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) repeated that the “clock is ticking” for the president to convince voters he can perform unscripted.

And later Wednesday, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) became the second House Democrat to call for Biden to abandon his bid for a second term following his shaky debate performance last week. In an interview with The New York Times, Grijalva said the president should “shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat — and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”

The comments by high-profile members of the party are a shift in messaging in the past 24 hours: While outspoken Democrats are still broadly supportive of Biden, their patience is beginning to wear.

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After Thursday’s presidential debate debacle — widely regarded as a low point for President Joe Biden, who appeared feeble and sometimes confused — many Democratic elites and nonpartisan pundits are suggesting a break-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency move that resided on the margins of conventional political thought just a week ago: The incumbent president, they argue, should step aside in the interest of the country, and delegates should name his replacement at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Any move to replace Biden just four months before the election carries considerable risk. The party can ill afford to pass over its sitting vice president, Kamala Harris, who represents a core Democratic constituency as a Black woman — but Harris consistently underperforms in polling. And allowing delegates to make such a momentous decision, negating the will of millions of primary voters and turning a nomination process that has been the norm for decades upside-down, is surely a recipe for division and rancor.

But it’s not like we haven’t been here before. On March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson stunned the nation when he announced that he was pulling out of that year’s presidential election. The Democratic National Convention that followed several months later devolved into chaos and violence and left the party’s eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, hobbled at the start of the fall campaign season. He ultimately lost a painfully close election to Richard Nixon, in no small part because of the unruly convention in Chicago.

It’s not hard to imagine a similar outcome should Democratic leaders persuade Biden to step aside. But in the spirit of that old Mark Twain chestnut — history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes — context is everything. An open convention could well be a “Dems in Disarray” moment. But it could also provide a jolt to the system and wake many unhappy voters, who are currently disappointed with their options, from their slumber.

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President Joe Biden’s campaign is concocting many phony reasons why he must stay in the race for Democrats to have any hope of defeating Donald Trump in November. Perhaps the most prominent are the notions that replacing Biden is impossible or would invite chaos at the convention and lead to Trump’s victory.

As a veteran of multiple Democratic conventions over the years and as President Barack Obama’s former White House counsel, I can tell you that’s just not true.

It would be good for the Democratic Party and good for the country for Biden to release his delegates and allow them to pick someone else to run against Trump. Simply put, Biden is not the strongest candidate, and there is plenty of time to pick someone else.

In fact, party leaders could easily establish a transparent and orderly system for delegates to choose a new candidate in an open convention — a candidate who is best positioned to beat Trump. 

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Amid all of the Democratic panic-texting prompted by President Joe Biden’s shaky debate performance Thursday, one name was curiously absent from many of those conversations: Vice President Kamala Harris.

Names including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer trended online as potential replacements for Biden on the Democratic ticket, while Harris — by several measures the most obvious and best-positioned candidate — was left to publicly defend Biden at the single worst moment of their four-year-old political partnership.

That was to the chagrin of some Harris allies, who are privately expressing frustration that her name is not being mentioned in the same company as other ambitious Democrats. But they can do little about it: Harris is laboring under a de facto mandate to defend him.

“There’s nothing that she could do externally that would be wise,” Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo said. “Her best strategy is to internally just be an amazing VP.”

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With voter concern about President Joe Biden’s age haunting his chances of reelection, a new poll shows his next in line, Vice President Kamala Harris, facing serious doubts about her ability to win the presidency herself, or to perform the job well were she to inherit it.

The POLITICO/Morning consult poll reveals that only a third of voters think it’s likely Harris would win an election were she to become the Democratic nominee, and just three of five Democrats believe she would prevail. A quarter of independents think she would win.

That skepticism extends to her potential future role as the head of her party. Forty-two percent of voters described her as a strong leader, including three-quarters of Democrats but only a third of independents.

The poll shows that Harris shares the same poor ratings as Biden. Both are well underwater, Biden at 43 percent favorable and 54 unfavorable, Harris at 42 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable.

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Donald Trump’s behavior should disqualify him for the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to tell a state Democratic Party dinner in Detroit on Saturday night, in one of her first campaign appearances since the former president’s historic criminal conviction.

In excerpts of planned remarks to attendees, Harris makes her most direct public criticism yet of Trump’s false claims of his New York trial being rigged — drawing a line between his “attacks” on the justice system and his attempts to discredit the 2020 election.

"You know why he complains? Because the reality is, cheaters don’t like getting caught,” read the excerpts, shared with the press pool.

Harris, who has long highlighted her prosecutorial record and service as California attorney general on the campaign trail, outlines in the remarks how a jury made a unanimous decision to convict the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records. She notes that Trump’s defense was able to participate in selecting both jurors and witnesses, in a rebuke of his allegations that he was not treated fairly.

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