It brings me no pleasure to inform you that we have reached the “dumping” phase of Joe Biden’s presidency. This is an academic term, actually. A Rutgers historian named George Sirgiovanni—great Jersey name, by the way—wrote a scholarly article titled “Dumping The Vice President” back in 1994, when some columnists and fretful Democrats were calling on Bill Clinton to dump his veep, Al Gore, and replace him on the ticket with someone more exciting, in hopes of saving Clinton’s then-ugly re-election chances. Sirgiovanni cracked open some books and found that among the country’s historical roster of vice presidents, only eight had suffered the humiliation of being kicked off the party’s ticket heading into re-election. I guarantee that you can’t name half of them.

But in modern times, at least since the upheaval of Watergate, no sitting V.P. has been booted from a ticket. Not once. Nevertheless, as Sirgiovanni found, when rough political winds are blowing against an incumbent president, the pundit class almost always seems to float the possibility of trading running mates. These pre-election yelps have come for every vice president going back to 1984—Bush the elder, Dan Quayle, Gore, Dick Cheney, Biden, and Mike Pence just a few years ago. And now, with President Biden’s approval rating hovering barely over 40 percent, Vice President Kamala Harris is getting the dumping treatment, too. 

The chatter—and I can tell you it is only that—is as predictable as it is pointless. I’ll explain why. But first, the case for ditching Harris is centered on two issues: Biden’s age, and Harris’ unpopularity. Biden is 80. At some point, he might become too infirm to serve, or be forced to step down, or even go to that great Scranton diner in the sky. If he does, is Harris up to the job of replacing him in 2024 or beyond? This succession question goes to the heart of the Democratic Party’s future, which makes it perfect fodder for center-left columnists with deadlines to hit.