I'm not really sure how high I'd assess the likelihood of it happening - right now clearly it's not, but if a few more similar incidents follow, who knows. But mostly I was talking about IF it happens, if Biden himself takes that decision, then how would people react.

The hand-selection point, that even if he does agree to step down, he/his team might still claim the right to choose who replaces him - yes, probably. I'm not convinced that they'd throw their weight behind someone who may be associated with his faction but doesn't seem viable - like the VP Kamala Harris - though.


Well sure, that's another very problematic feature of the American election system, the terribly skewed incentives created by FPTP and especially the entrenched American version of it. But if you want to seriously claim that such deliberate manipulations played a more than marginal role in the 2016 primary, that if Clinton hadn't intervened somebody else would've been nominated, I've got to call bullshit. The role of the press, taken as a whole, was no doubt significant, but that's not because of anything Clinton or the Democratic party did or wanted, but because of Trump's remarkable talent for provocation and headline-grabbing enormities. And of course because of the huge number of Republicans who, after decades of culture war, had reached a point where 'pisses off the liberals' had become a more important criterium for their vote than more substantive things like political track record, policy ideas or even conservative bona fides.