A Trump Conviction? A Biden Health Crisis? Gaming Out Scenarios for an Up-for-Grabs Convention (or Two!) in 2024

“What would be the point of having a nominee,” he asks, “who, at best, could only win something like 214 Electoral College votes in November?”

The Democrats’ rules, according to Ginsberg, are more relaxed when it comes to “bound delegates,” which means it would be easier for them to find an alternative choice if something should befall Biden.

“It would be a free-for-all,” contends Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s former press secretary, who paints a picture of a convention like those of earlier generations in which delegates would gather in smoke-filled hotel rooms and convention crannies, wrangling votes for a nominee at the eleventh hour.

In Gibbs’s view, however, the delegates would likely back someone who looked more like the coalition of their base: meaning, candidates who are younger and/or of color and/or female.

There are a lot of talented democrats who fit that description, including Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Mitch Landrieu, Phil Murphy, Cory Booker. Kamala Harris would naturally be in the mix. But delegates in Chicago would likely feel compelled to turn the page on the Biden-Harris team for a completely fresh ticket.

And yet, if Carville’s right, then none of these scenarios really fits the bill of being a total surprise.

It’s not hard to imagine a situation on the Republican side where delegates would want someone as pugnacious and outrageous as Donald Trump. Not to mention someone who had been 100% loyal to Trump. So none of the candidates who ran in the primary, except perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy, would qualify. Thus, why wouldn’t they nominate someone like, say, Greg Abbott or Marco Rubio for president? Or, going further afield, why not Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity?

And then you can imagine the Dems might freak out and determine that a traditional pick might not cut it. And they could try to out-Tucker the GOP by nominating their own celeb: an Oprah or a Jon Stewart, a Bob Iger or a Mark Cuban. Or they could decide they need a true superhero. Paging Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Go ahead and laugh. Far-fetched? As far-fetched as, oh, nominating a reality-TV host?