There is no reason for Biden to wait

If the possibility of Biden stepping down exists in his inner circle, now is the time.

Joe Biden and his internal team is spending the weekend at Camp David. The buzz, of course, is that they are evaluating his ability to move forward in the race after the disastrous debate performance. The reality was that this retreat was planned long before the debate and to the degree that they are talking about the state of the campaign, it is in no way an emergency meeting.

Buzz is that Jill and Hunter are both telling Joe to stay in the race and are basically blaming his bad performance on his campaign staff and those who prepped him. This is not unexpected. They have convinced themselves that it wasn't that bad and pushing the concept that he has raised a good deal of money since the debate. I am thinking the chances of him voluntarily leaving at this point is dwindling, especially with no obvious candidate to replace him.

All that being said, if Biden was going to drop out, one would think that now is the time. Perhaps we are not quite at the "now or never" area of things, but I think the longer Biden stays in the race, the less and less likely it will be to see him get out. I see no way that he walks into the convention with 98% of the delegates and then turns over the race to someone who isn't likely polling any better than he is against Trump. That wouldn't make sense to me, and I doubt the Biden team is willing to forego the chance at a second term in order to give someone else the same statistical chance for a first term. Obviously if there was someone who suddenly looked like they could defeat Trump in November, then that might be a different story, but right now the "replace Biden" movement probably doesn't have a better alternate. All they have are potential, unproven, hypothetical better options.

In other words, the longer he stays in the race, the less likely he is leaving. Newsom's odds of becoming the nominee skyrocketed after the debate but has dropped back down to around 13% after some reflection. He is just barely ahead of Harris, who sits at 12%. Biden has not fully recovered back to his pre-debate 80%, but he is crawling back up and currently sits just under 60%. If he doesn't step down this week, then I suspect it continues to climb.