Ready for it? Hunger Games meets March Madness meets America’s Got Talent!

If Biden withdraws, the election of the Democratic nominee for president will be up to the delegates to the Democratic National Convention. There are 4,672 delegates: 3,933 pledged delegates and 739 automatic delegates (AKA Superdelegates). Only pledged delegates get to vote in the first round. If nobody wins on the first round, the superdelegates also get to vote in subsequent rounds. This means it takes 1,968 pledged delegates to win in the first round, or 2,258 total delegates to win in the second and later rounds. Of the 3,901 pledged delegates elected so far, 3,894 are pledged to Joe Biden.

Here’s how the DNC could produce a riveting “show” and a strong nominee over the next eight weeks: think of it as March Madness meets America’s Got Talent, only with 4,682 judges. Call it Democrats Got November.

1. Joe Biden bows out gracefully, commends Kamala Harris, recognizes that he can’t hand pick his successor, and vows to be a strong President until January 2025 and a vocal supporter of the eventual Democratic nominee.
2. The DNC announces a dramatic new plan for choosing a nominee.
3. The DNC prepares an initial very inclusive list of possible nominees and sends it to the delegates with instructions for each to identify the 10 people they’d most want to see vying for the nomination. There’s even a blank for write-ins.
4. The DNC tabulates the results and creates a new list of the 16 names mentioned most by the delegates. The next half-dozen names are designated as “alternates” for the moment. The List of 16 potential candidates is announced.
5. The DNC then asks each person on that list if he or she will commit to running for President if nominated and commit to serving as President if elected. Each will also be asked to commit to serving instead as Vice-President if selected, and to supporting the eventual nominee. For those who say yes-yes-yes-yes, an accelerated vetting process is launched immediately. Those who decline to run or who quickly fail the vetting will be replaced from the alternates list to get back up to 16.
6. The DNC announces the results – the 16 official candidates.
7. DNC staff quickly creates short biographies of each of the Sweet 16, each readable in about 10 minutes. These will go to the delegates. Each of the 16 will also be invited to create a 10-minute video making their case any way they like and be given two weeks to do so. The DNC will provide a video crew for any who don’t have them.
8. Delegates will read the bios and watch the videos. The DNC will then conduct a ranked choice poll of the delegates, asking each to select their 8 favorites, and stack rank them.
9. The ranked choice vote will be used to select the Elite Eight. If a candidate is disqualified by the ongoing vetting process, the next-highest scoring name will replace him/her.
10. The DNC will recruit a panel of top journalists who will gather together to interview each of the Elite Eight individually, using a set of questions designed to determine how well each candidate handles difficult issues, and touching on the most important topics and/or political hot buttons in this election. The tone will be challenging but not egregiously adversarial. The delegates and public can watch the interviews live. Delegates will have up to a day after each is conducted to watch the video. Each will last about an hour.
11. After viewing the interviews, the delegates will respond to another ranked choice poll, thereby selecting the Final Four. At the convention, each of the Final Four will give a major speech, after which the delegates will be polled to score their initial reactions.
12. After all 4 have had their chance to speak, the Final Four will be invited to an extended AMA together, live with the delegates, with a system ensuring that each gets an equal number of delegate questions and a roughly equal amount of speaking time. Delegates will use their phones to submit questions, and a team of editors will sort, combine and clarify them rapidly, to feed to one or more readers who will ask them. Maybe celebrity Democrats not running for office are the readers?
13. A final ranked choice vote will be taken, with the winner declared the nominee. The nominee will then review all the scores and other info about the other candidates in the Sweet Sixteen and choose his/her Final Four choices for Vice President. The delegates will then participate in a final ranked choice vote for VP from the nominee’s four choices. The bottom two will be eliminated.
14. The nominee gets his/her choice of VP between the final two.
15. There will be a big reveal at the convention, with speeches by new nominees and maybe a few favorite runners-up to be sure to connect with key constituencies. The POTUS speech is the grand finale.

I don’t think the DNC is likely to do this (for a hundred reasons), but there’s no reason why they couldn’t. Instead, senior Democrats are making a million outdated (and frequently fearful) assumptions about how an “open convention” might be terrible, or at least uncontrollable, and just assuming a chaotic scramble from now until the convention, with many ways things could go sideways, and in any case nobody campaigning against Trump until after the convention.

I think a production like this would dominate news coverage for two months, pushing Trump mostly out of the spotlight. It would create a rocket-fueled launch for the new ticket. It could make Trump and the Republicans look old and tired. It would be a tremendous help in raising new money.

For any of this to happen, Joe Biden would have to recognize that his resting oldface during the debate put him in a deep hole without a ladder, and that his country and party need him to make a dignified exit.