With no major challenger for his party’s nomination, President Joe Biden might have expected to be coasting through the primary season right now.

Instead, he’s facing loud calls from various thought leaders – including prominent liberals – to drop out of the 2024 race.

As these critics see it, Mr. Biden, at age 81, comes across as too old and is in real danger of losing to the likely Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. They argue he could still step aside – possibly by making a surprise announcement at the summer convention and letting the party’s delegates hash it out.

But while a brokered convention might be a great story for the media, it could also easily backfire on Democrats. There’s a reason parties ditched “smoke-filled rooms” in favor of the more democratic method of letting the voters pick their nominee via primaries and caucuses. Moreover, Mr. Biden’s lack of competition for the nomination likely indicates that the party’s next-generation politicians all saw taking on an incumbent president as a lost cause.

In the end, Mr. Biden dropping out of the 2024 race is “not gonna happen,” says Mike Mikus, a Democratic consultant based in suburban Pittsburgh.

With no major challenger for his party’s nomination, President Joe Biden might have expected to be coasting through the primary season right now.

Instead, he’s facing loud calls from various thought leaders – including prominent liberals – to drop out of the 2024 race, either soon or at the summer convention.

As these critics see it, Mr. Biden, at age 81, is too old – and more important, looks and sounds it – and is in real danger of losing to the likely Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. The polls suggest as much. Some add that while Mr. Biden has a solid record to run on, it’s time to pass the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders. 

And, they say, there’s still enough time for Democrats to find a new candidate before November. New York Times columnists Ezra Klein, a liberal, and Ross Douthat, an anti-Trump conservative, have argued separately this month that Mr. Biden should announce he’s stepping down at the August convention, setting off a frenzied contest in Chicago to select a new nominee. 

That’s what political conventions were originally designed for, Mr. Douthat writes: “handling intraparty competition.” Mr. Klein echoes that point, adding that there’s a “ton of talent” in the Democratic Party – governors, senators, Cabinet secretaries, not to mention Vice President Kamala Harris – who could vie for the nomination. 

But there’s a reason the parties ditched the “smoke-filled room” method of selecting nominees in favor of letting the voters decide via primaries and caucuses: It’s a much more democratic system. And while a brokered convention might be a great story for the media, it could easily backfire on the party.