Will Joe Biden be replaced after his fight against Donald Trump?

President Joe Biden’s (81) appearance against rival Donald Trump (78) in the first televised debate on Thursday sparked a new wave of criticism within the Democratic Party. According to various US media, the party is considering dropping the 81-year-old president from the race. Democrats panicked after the televised fight. Some of them are apparently discussing the once-unspeakable: replacing him on the ballot.

“There’s a sense of shock in the way he appeared at the start of this debate. The way he sounded. David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser and campaign worker for former President Barack Obama, told CNN, “He seemed a little disoriented. CNN commentator Van Jones is confident Democrats will try to replace Biden.

“No one expected Joe Biden to dominate the debate, but no one expected this crash,” a senior Democratic official told Politico, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“He was bad at message, bad at content, bad at confronting, bad at presentation, bad at non-verbal communication. He has no silver lining in this debate. It’s clear that this happened in June, not October,” the adviser said.

Publicly, Democratic officials have largely rallied behind Biden, arguing that the weak performance won’t change the fundamentals of the campaign. In the modern era, no party tries to change their candidate against their will, knowing that it will fail. Party rules make it almost impossible to replace a candidate without their consent. Such a move would mean party insiders would override the results of primaries in which Democratic voters favored Biden.

The only plausible scenario for the Democrats to get a new nominee is if Biden decides to withdraw. However, he repeatedly rejected this during other difficult phases of his election campaign.