People have been talking behind closed doors about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for the past several years. After the Wall Street Journal published a story earlier this month raising concerns about Biden’s health, Democrats slammed the article, deflected the criticism, and characterized it as a hit piece. But after his performance in the first presidential debate on Thursday night, party operatives were no longer able to hide the problem. 

Now, as Democrats scramble to assess the damage, the question has turned to how – or if – the party will address Biden’s candidacy crisis at the Democratic National Convention in August. 

“They’ve just been trying to skate to the general election with as minimal exposure as possible to the public. And now it’s blown up on them,” said Thomas Kennedy, a former delegate to the Democratic National Committee who resigned in January over Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. “The delegates knew, the electeds knew, the donors knew, obviously the staffers know,” he said. “Everybody knew.” 

Efforts to raise concerns within the DNC about Biden’s health have been definitively shut down for years, Kennedy said. One DNC member who suggested that another candidate should run in 2024 said he was attacked by other members and faced with a vote to remove him from the committee. “That’s the sort of pushback that any sort of — not just dissent, but any sort of mentioning of this topic — has been happening for two years,” Kennedy said. 

Biden’s campaign, for its part, made clear on Friday that he has no intention of backing down. Asked about his debate performance, campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt emphasized that Biden would not be stepping down and pointed to the campaign’s $14 million fundraising haul after the debate and a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday. “He just gave a very forceful speech at a rally in NC with a fired up crowd,” Hitt wrote to The Intercept. In comments made on Air Force One on Friday afternoon, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler doubled down: “Joe Biden is the nominee,” Tyler said. 

Current and former delegates told The Intercept there is little chance that the DNC would change course. The convention, the delegates said, would likely follow the same pro forma processes that have sidelined reform efforts and with them, the party’s progressive wing. The convention has already moved the vote for the presidential nomination online, weeks before the actual convention is held in person in Chicago. 

There are mechanisms to allow for an open convention to nominate another candidate, but the party has avoided that option as a last resort and it would be too late at this point, said Nadia Ahmad, a DNC member in Florida. Biden would have to decide to step aside on his own accord. Or, delegates would have to organize themselves quickly to commit to another candidate. Given that the nomination vote will take place ahead of the convention, Ahmad said that any open nomination process would have to take place online too, which is unlikely. 

“There’s definitely an appetite for what I would call the combustion factor,” Ahmad said. “People are willing to burn things down to maybe get them to work. That’s where you see the rise of a third party.” 

The convention has long stopped serving as a place for democratic decision-making, she added. “The Democratic Party is more invested in trying to maintain control than it is in trying to win an election in November.” 

Another DNC member who requested anonymity to avoid reprisal said the debate only emphasized what progressives have been saying about the DNC in recent cycles. “Unless Biden withdraws, the convention is a stage managed coronation.” 

Kennedy noted that the days of action-packed political conventions are far behind us. “These are not the conventions of 1968 or 1972 that we read about,” he said. “They’re just highly choreographed top-down affairs where there’s not a lot of room for political maneuvering or opposing sides, or anything that strays away from the establishment. And the delegates are carefully chosen and funneled in a way that they’re part of the party machinery and hackery.” 

Days before the debate, the New York Times published a story about how the president was battling “misleading videos” showing his age-related deterioration. Very quickly into the debate on Thursday evening, Biden’s campaign was battling on another front: how to stop the bleeding as coverage swirled about how the performance would affect his chances at winning the November election. During a routine, post-debate call with surrogates last night, campaign staff acknowledged that the debate was rocky, according to a source who attended. By the next day, the party apparatus was back to normal messaging.

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