WaPo reports on the backlash to DNC plans to hold a “virtual roll call” prior to next month’s convention, effectively reducing the time available to replace Biden as the party’s nominee:

Democratic infighting erupted into new territory Tuesday as a trio of party elders pushed to stick with formally nominating President Biden weeks ahead of the party’s national convention, prompting some House Democrats to demand a slower process amid calls for him to step aside….

Three Biden allies who previously chaired the Democratic National Committee sent an email Tuesday to the roughly 180 members of the DNC’s rules committee pushing to hold a “virtual roll call” to formally nominate Biden and Vice President Harris by early August.

“It should conclude in advance of August 7. This is a small but important step to ensure that Democratic nominees appear on every ballot in the United States this fall,” wrote Donna Brazile, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

The Post reports that, while some support this approach, “other House Democrats have responded furiously to what they consider meritless scare tactics from party officials who they say are trying to ram a politically vulnerable president through the official nominating process.”

You can find the Brazile-McAuliffe-Dean email here. In addition to discussing the Ohio ballot access problem — since resolved by legislation and no longer a real problem, as Rick explained yesterday — it cites four states (Washington, Montana, Oklahoma, and California) with filing deadlines between August 20 and 22. (The Democratic Convention will take place August 19-22.)

The most polite thing I can say about the legal arguments for a pre-convention virtual roll call is that they don’t pass the smell test. Does anyone really think that Washington and California are going to exclude Biden-Harris from the ballot? Or for that matter Oklahoma or Montana, where he has no chance of winning? And was the DNC somehow unaware of these filing deadlines at the time they scheduled the convention? The memo says that national elections have become “hyper-litigious” (news to anyone?), but there’s no serious effort to argue that there’s any genuine legal risk of Biden-Harris being left off the ballot in any state. Respectfully, these are makeweight arguments designed to deflect attention from the Biden/DNC plan to run out the clock, which has been discernible since at least early last week.

The possibility that the virtual roll call might start as soon as July 21 (four days from now) has some House Democrats very worried, according to this AP report. The AP says it has a draft letter (not yet sent) that calls the early vote “a terrible idea” that “could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats.”

All this comes as Politico Playbook releases draft polling results from BlueLabs Analytics, finding that Trump is “comfortably” leading Biden in swing states, and that alternative Democratic candidates — Sen. Mark Kelly, Gov. Wes Moore, Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — outperform Biden by about 5 points. VP Harris also outperforms Biden too, though by a smaller margin. Playbook quotes an unnamed Democratic leader of the effort to replace Biden as saying: “The shooting clearly helped the strategy of Biden’s team to run out the clock…. But it’s not over. Senior D leaders have not changed their minds that Biden needs to get out. I think a final push will come once the R convention ends on Thursday.” That may be too late.