After about the first five minutes of Thursday night's presidential debate, panic set in among Democrats -- and it hasn't abated since. The exposure of Joe Biden's senility on prime time has every Democrat in office scrambling for themselves, hoping to distance themselves from both the upcoming electoral collapse as well as any blame for it. Replacement scenarios that could have possibly worked a year ago are now being frantically exhumed far past their expiration dates, including several prospects for an elite-clique appointment that ignores 14 million primary voters in this cycle.

One of the most prominent names bandied about since 9:06 pm ET Thursday is that of Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, whose state will be critical to Democrat hopes in November. Her name got bandied about so much, in fact, that Whitmer began worrying about looking disloyal to the naked emperor, according to Politico's Jonathan Martin. A full day after Biden's debacle, Whitmer called the White House to disavow the 'Draft Gretch chatter':

Whitmer’s conversation with the official, campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, was cordial but awkward by its very nature. In the aftermath of the president’s disastrous debate performance last Thursday, no would-be replacement has been the recipient of more wish-casting among despairing Democrats than the second-term Michigan governor.

Whitmer, recognizing as much, disavowed the Draft Gretch chatter. She used the call to reiterate her commitment and willingness to help the president but also voiced her concern about how much more difficult the campaign would be now for Biden, I’m told by a person familiar with the call.

But ... that's not the end of the story. With Biden now clearly doddering, the market has belatedly opened to all those within the party with presidential ambitions -- especially among the governors. Those ambitions got pushed off until 2028 after Biden decided to run for a second term and the DNC locked out any significant primary challenges, but they're beginning to heat up now. And so has the back-stabbing, it seems, but at least that shook loose a pretty significant nugget, emphasis mine:

Even more revealing is how word of the call reached me: from someone close to a potential 2028 Whitmer rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. This person said Whitmer had phoned O’Malley Dillon with more of an unambiguous SOS: to relay that Michigan, in the wake of the debate, was no longer winnable for Biden.

Gee ... so all that sucking up to the pro-Hamas contingent in Dearborn was for nothing, eh?

In fairness, Michigan looked like a stretch for Biden anyway. Biden has only led in a handful of polls taken in the state over the past year, and none of them outside the margin of error. Trump had a pretty substantial lead in the RCP aggregate average over the winter, but it had narrowed somewhat in this spring. Biden's debate performance will likely send Trump soaring again.  Whitmer knows it, and so does O'Malley Dillon -- and if they lose Michigan, they'll probably lose Wisconsin (tied in RCP) and Pennsylvania (Trump +2.8) again, too. 

Not to mention Nevada (Trump +2.8), Arizona (Trump +5.6), and Georgia (Trump +4.0), all Biden states in 2020. Flipping these states would give Trump 302 Electoral College votes even without Wisconsin. And all of these RCP averages are before post-debate polling emerges. 

In other words, Democrats were probably doomed before Thursday night. But Biden's toast now, and there's no getting around it. The rest of the Class of 2028 know it too, but as Martin reports, they can't do much about it -- for now:

“The temperature is high,” one Democratic governor told me Sunday about sentiment among the party’s state executives. “A lot of anxiety, a lot of folks at the edge of their seat.”

This governor said the party was likely best off sticking with Biden, but reserved the right to revise and extend that assessment based on the president’s polling and fundraising by mid-July.

Mid-July is the DNC's deadline, thanks to the necessity of holding a pre-convention nomination vote. That's a pretty short window for such a momentous decision, but clearly the buzzards are circling. Of course, the other problem here is getting past Kamala Harris, which Martin addresses in his report and I discussed on Saturday. Her numbers are worse than Biden's or Trump's, so let's just say that the elite clique of the Democrat Party will have its work cut out for it.