It was no revelation to me how badly Joe Biden looked in his debate, nor I suspect, to most AT readers; and that in the wake of this disaster, he won’t withdraw.

Now lots of Democrats are urging he stay -- John Fetterman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad, Maxine Waters. They may figure if the party is going to start imposing minimum mental health requirements, the jig is up.

The people who actually run the show -- Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, etc. -- badly want Joe to quit. And they have the votes, if needed, at the convention to simply change the rules and free his delegates. But, as Pelosi’s twin sister likes to say, “these things must be done delicately.”

They don’t want a big scene or a huge mess in Chicago. Jill and the rest of the Team Biden grifters won’t go without a fight, or an enormous payoff. I assume George Soros and Reid Hoffman have already been told they may be buying some Hunter Biden masterpiece paintings.

Enough money might do the trick. The DNC has an important rules meeting coming up July 19. That’s probably the drop-dead date for Joe to leave the race without a fuss.

But if not, will Pelosi and the other big shots have the temerity to go public in a fight to push out Biden? They are certainly ruthless enough. In the past, Democrats like LBJ would not hesitate to torpedo somebody who was in their way, then brag for years about doing the deed. However, today’s Dems for some reason just don’t like to be seen getting their hands dirty.

Joe Biden is not quite a dictator, but he has been around long enough to have an enormous sense of entitlement. Like a Fidel Castro, he expects to die of old age before he ever retires. So maybe he does stick around till November.

Certainly, the polls are not yet hopeless. There are plenty of swing states left for optimistic Biden people to pin their hopes on.

We may not see the big collapse until after Labor Day, when everything goes south as Joe continues to deteriorate.

What I wonder about is the 25th Amendment. It makes sense for the Democrats to wait as long as possible and then pull the ultimate October Surprise. What could happen is, after a particularly bad public outing, Kamala and the cabinet would simply meet one evening in the White House (Obama would need to set this up ahead of time), call Joe downstairs after his bedtime for an interview, and sadly inform the raving maniac he is no longer President. They would want to get Biden’s hysterics on tape, to make sure Jill and the few cabinet officer holdouts, like Blinken, understand this will be released if they don’t go along.

The relief and celebration from the news media and liberal America once the news hit would be amazing. Madame President Harris would be proclaimed a hero greater than Washington, Lincoln, and FDR all rolled into one.

Trump and the GOP would be left spluttering about Willie Brown's girlfriend, that she was as much to blame as Jill Biden for covering up Biden’s infirmities all along and creating this mess. But that would not matter to Trump haters across the globe, all of whom would be in ecstasy. A couple weeks of adulatory press coverage would overwhelm the October news cycles.  President Harris, the brave savior of the Republic, might eke out a razor thin victory with enough ballot harvesting.

Sure, such a scenario is unlikely to happen, but it’s no less farfetched than what already occurs every day in our nation’s politics. 

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, KY. 

Image: Gage Skidmore