From the point in early 2016 when Donald Trump began scoring plurality victories in Republican primaries, I was convinced that experienced Republican leaders would soon step in to protect their party against this seeming self-immolation. How could someone so manifestly unfit for the presidency possibly gain a major party’s nomination to that office?  Then, in disbelief, I watched a steady stream of Republican leaders, many of whom I had sincerely respected over the years, fall into line behind Trump.

At that time, I was several years into working on a book that would eventually be published as Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy.  In one of the key chapters in the book, “Partisan Quicksand,” I sought to understand why political parties have so often found themselves drawn, even against what would seem to be their better judgement, into supporting positions that, one way or another, would contribute to the undermining of democracy.  I was not focusing the analysis on Donald Trump, since this self-destructive partisan phenomenon had long predated Trump’s unexpected appearance on the political stage.

In fact, one of the architects of the first American political party, James Madison, had put his finger squarely on this partisan danger in his famous analysis of what he called “factions” in Federalist #10.  “By a faction,” Madison wrote, “I understand a number of citizens … who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the … permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Neither Madison nor I would argue that this description has always accurately described the activities of the great political parties of American history.  But the factious dynamic that Madison so eloquently described has, without question, sometimes characterized all of those parties.  In our own time, it precisely explains the progressive surrender of the Republican Party to Donald Trump in and after 2016.  And it explains the (so far steadfast) determination of the Democratic Party to nominate Joe Biden for a second term in spite of widespread and now deepening concerns about his age.  Both of these are examples of “a number of citizens … who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the … permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Whether the Republican Party can ever extract itself from the quicksand of Trumpism remains unknown, but clearly that will not happen this year.  The Democratic Party, however, still has a few weeks in which to free itself from the deadly quicksand into which it has stumbled with its stubborn support for the faltering candidacy of Joe Biden.

Let me state plainly that I admire and appreciate Biden’s many contributions to the common good over a long and distinguished career, not least his record as president.  As someone closing in on 80 myself, I stand in awe of the stamina of an octogenarian making two trips to Europe in as many weeks, and then returning to an endless round of governing and campaigning.  But I have consistently numbered myself among the substantial majority of Democrats who never believed that Biden, at his age, should seek a second term.

I knew, from my own political experience, that ingrained partisan dynamics would make it very difficult for Democratic leaders to persuade themselves to persuade Biden to step aside, but I had continued to hope that this could still happen before the August convention.  In those terms, his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate seemed like it might prove a godsend,  providing at last the impetus for his withdrawal.

The first week following the debate has shown very little movement in that direction, particularly from Democratic Party leadership.  But this is simply partisan quicksand at work.  As I argued in that chapter of Citizens Uniting, the closer anyone is to the center of power, the less likely they are to endanger their own power by saying what needs to be said in a situation like this.  Instead, what we have heard from the core of the party is a chorus of suggestions that we all simply unsee what we saw in that debate.

The flip side of this dynamic is that it is those on the periphery of the morass who must help their leaders free themselves from the quicksand.  Rank and file Democrats who remember what they saw last Thursday, and who feel in their guts the disaster it portends, should now be in touch with their own state’s delegates to the national convention (many of whom are pretty ordinary citizens themselves), encouraging them to encourage their leaders to encourage Joe Biden to act now on behalf of “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

One last word:  as a lifelong Democrat, sometimes a leader in my own party, I am distressed by how fearful so many of my fellow Democrats seem to be at the prospect of an open (that is, a democratic) convention.  Yes, it could go wrong, but the current course is all but guaranteed to go wrong.  The truly democratic version of this glass is at least half full.  If urged by party leaders (including the current and two former presidents), the citizen delegates could engage in a vibrant display of real democracy before what would surely be a record TV audience.  If all potential candidates and delegates were to pledge in advance, not only to support the eventual nominee, but to conduct their convention in ways that would make viewers feel good about democracy, the party that James Madison helped to form would be well on its way to a resounding victory up and down the ballot come November.

Daniel Kemmis, a former speaker of the Montana House of Representatives and mayor of Missoula, is the author of Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy.