It’s time: The Democrats must replace Joe Biden with California Gov. Gavin Newsom | Opinion

After Thursday night’s debate performance, one thing is crystal clear: The national Democratic Party must immediately announce they will seek to replace President Joe Biden as the presumptive candidate.

We can do better than this. There are still nearly two months before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, scheduled for late August. Thursday’s debate made it clear that Biden must be replaced as the candidate with someone — anyone.

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

It could be a Hail Mary play for the ages, bringing Newsom in to save the day like a handsome Hollywood leading man in a Sorkinesque script. He could rally delegates and fill them with enthusiasm. It would harken to a sense of normalcy in our country — even if it’s a rich, white, cis sense of normalcy.

It’s clear the Republican Party is determined to ride its orange horse all the way to The White House, but he remains a threat to democracy today just the same as he was eight years ago. But for the Democrats, only a fresh injection of visible vitality and something more than a minimally-acceptable level of intelligence will save Americans from a second Trump administration, and prominent Democrats and donors must now loudly begin the calls.

We have to have someone to rally around, and Newsom is the only person with enough name recognition to have a chance in such a moment.

And believe me, I gain no pleasure from complimenting the California governor. I find him unresponsive to good advice and too reactionary to criticism.

But Newsom at least projects an air of competence, unlike the old man and the con man debating each other Thursday night. A Newsom administration would be no worse than Bill Clinton’s, I think. But for all his faults, Newsom is still far preferable to what we endured on CNN Thursday evening, and the looming vision of what we might endure for the next four years.

The debate was painful to watch: Both presidents — the current and the former — were caricatures of their worst criticisms and stereotypes. Biden grasped the podium for dear life and seemed unable to focus. Meanwhile, the first words out of Trump’s wet mouth were a rambling lie about how well the economy did under his administration. Nothing got better from there. At one point they even argued about their golf handicaps.

On reproductive rights, one of the biggest issues for Americans this year, both presumptive candidates clearly had no idea what to say. And 51% of the population got no comfort from this debate, and will continue to live in fear for their lives as they have been for the past two years.

Trump insisted that Biden and the Democrats were willing to “rip a baby out of the womb” at nine months “and beyond” to kill it, demonstrating a serious lack of knowledge about how birth or abortion — or even just the female anatomy — works. (No such thing happened or has ever happened, by the way.) Biden, for his part, clearly only remembered the keywords on the issue and appeared disoriented.

If I didn’t have to watch this debate for my job, I would have turned it off after the first five minutes in disgust.

But for anyone who managed to keep it on, this debate did make the truth painfully clear: Biden is not the right candidate to run in November. He must step aside and clear the path to another candidate.

There is simply no other option — and our time is almost up.