Democrats are freaking out about President Biden’s dismal debate performance Thursday night because, well, yikes. Talk is swirling about whether he should stay in the race.

• President Biden scheduled the earliest presidential debate in U.S. history in an attempt to shake up the campaign and quiet doubts about his age. But his meandering responses, uncertain appearance, bouts of incoherence and raspy voice (he apparently had a cold) only enflamed concerns. Trump told outrageous lies all night that the moderators didn’t fact-check (as they said they wouldn’t), and Biden struggled to refute his nonsense. When the spectacle finally ended, even longtime Biden supporters began openly talking about replacing him. Actually doing so is very tricky, though, for several reasons.

• There are basically two ways for Biden to depart: willingly, or unwillingly. The first is far simpler, technically speaking. Should he withdraw from the race, the delegates Biden won in the primaries, who have pledged to support him, would be free to vote for whomever they choose. Speculation is now mounting about who might try to pressure Biden to make that difficult decision.

• The second possibility would be to force Biden out against his will. But the rules make that next to impossible. A majority of delegates would need to be convinced to revolt against him — which, while possible in theory, is extremely unlikely, in part because these delegates are chosen by the Biden campaign. They’d have to be persuaded to break their pledge. “Someone would have to make an argument that this would be terrible, it’s the wrong thing to do, he’s too old, whatever,” Elaine Kamarck, an expert on political primaries who has also served as a Democratic delegate multiple times, told the Washington Post. “Which frankly is why no one would probably do it. It would be extremely destructive. You’d have to take him head on.”

No one knows what might happen next — but pressure is building.

• “Obviously that debate was a fucking disaster,” noted Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, which released a debate episode Friday morning. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is reportedly a personal friend of Biden’s, wrote that the debate made him “weep… Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.” One House Democrat told Axios that early on in the debate, their colleagues started sending around that famous clip from the movie “Airplane”: “I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue.” The Times editorial board called for Biden to leave the race.

• Even former President Barack Obama, Biden’s best surrogate, said Biden underwhelmed. “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” the former president wrote on Twitter/X, referencing his first disappointing matchup with Mitt Romney in 2012. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

• Biden held a rally in North Carolina on Friday, in which his voice seemed much stronger, and acknowledged all the bad reviews. “I know I’m not a young man,” Biden said. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth…. I know how to do this job….I know, like millions of Americans know; when you get knocked down you get back up!” The crowd roared.

Biden has so far given no sign he’ll consider calls to withdraw from the race. “Of course he’s not dropping out,” a campaign spokesperson said Friday.  Well, okay then.