'Head out of the sand': Here's who Democrats might consider if Biden steps aside

Democrats were jolted out of complacency about president Joe Biden's age with his alarming performance during his first debate against Donald Trump, and many party members are wondering what other options there might be.

The 81-year-old president and his supporters have brushed off concerns about his age by citing his accomplishments and pointing out that Trump is only three years younger, but the weaknesses cited by Biden's detractors were on clear display from the moment he first opened his mouth, reported Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake.

"The Democratic Party has spent much of the 2024 campaign burying its head in the sand over Americans’ concerns about President Biden’s age and mental sharpness," Blake wrote. "Rather than reckon with the problem, its most influential voices have cast it as an overblown media construct."

"But the party abruptly jerked its head out of that sand Thursday night, after a meandering, occasionally incoherent and almost universally panned first-debate performance from Biden," he added. "At its most pronounced, this has led to calls for Biden to step aside, including from those loyal to him."

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Biden has insisted he's staying in the race, but many Democrats who had been eager supporters and apologists for the octogenarian chief executive until he took the debate stage are suddenly looking past him for a new standard bearer.

"That instantaneous reaction is hugely significant, in and of itself," Blake wrote. "It’s the kind of conversation you avoid — and the party has strained to avoid — until you view it as absolutely necessary. Going there and then having Biden stay would only damage him further, because a bunch of allies would have said either implicitly or explicitly that he is not up to the task."

Blake listed 10 potential options starting, of course, with vice president Kamala Harris, who's about as unpopular as the president, but then moving on to a crop of likely contenders for 2028 whose timelines may be bumped forward by an election cycle.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tops most lists as a female governor from a crucial state who already enjoys a national profile, while other governors like Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania are all likely to run for president in four years – if not sooner.

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg nearly won both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in 2020 as the mayor of a midsize Midwestern city and can skillfully debate Fox News hosts and Republican lawmakers, and senators Rafael Warnock of Georgia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota could make sense.

Michelle Obama "is the fantasy option for Democrats," Blake wrote, but she has expressed no interest in running for office at all.

"It’s truly a desperate plan and one that features many hurdles," Blake wrote. "It would almost surely require Biden’s assent to step aside — he holds almost all of the pledged delegates to August’s Democratic National Convention — and even then the process for replacing him is fraught. It’s not even clear that an alternative would render the party better off."