I think most Dems, especially those who are highly politically engaged and closely follow election news, are going to vote blue no matter who. So, I think Bernie is preaching to the choir here. I think the Dems who are worried about Biden are worried he doesn't have enough support among independents, and they feel independents are much less likely to just vote for the Democrat, no matter who it is.
Now, could just any candidate replace Biden and automatically win back any of the independents he is believed to have lost? I don't know. A lot of Dems seem to think that just about any other candidate would do better than Biden among independents right now, but I'm not so sure.
But really, I don't think this is bickering. I think it's an intentionally slow drip of news to get people more receptive to the idea of replacing him with Kamala, so that it's not a bomb dropping all of a sudden, which would likely freak out a bunch of voters and cause them to lose votes. Boil the frog slowly and there's less of a splash.
We saw mass media and the Dems pull the same thing in 2004. Decide a candidate is unelectable, before the election, and then make it happen. What happened to letting the voters decide? What happened to democracy? Meh.
It was sick then, and it is sick now. If the man is too old, OK, but we all knew his age a year ago. To pretend to be surprised and concerned now is laughable.
A thought I haven’t seen offered much, but could give Biden an ego-soothing role instead of being put out to political pasture - a Harris:Biden ticket.
She gets to be the energetic go-getter at the front (that the Maga hate-oil salesmen are shrieking about atm) while Biden can play the ‘elder statesman’ role of advice and experience to Kamala instead of running himself. You defuse a lot of the competency/decline arguments against Biden, and gird against one of Harris’s biggest threats - her lack of international experience.
Kamala is not a political unknown, but Biden is losing/equal right now to Trump with the DNC money & publicity machine working for him the last eight years. I’d argue Harris has a better shot if those efforts are swung her way. I don’t like Harris, but needn’t convince me to vote team blue - it’s the ~9% undecided we need to convince.
I'm with him 100% on the first bit - at this point, the single most important thing the Dems have to do is stop bickering.
As for the rest, at this point I don't even much care. I can see arguments both for and against in both directions - either choice is going to involve some risk but either choice can be made to succeed.
So the important thing, and really the ONLY important thing, is to pick one and run with it. Stop with the dilly-dallying and the second-guessing and the bitching and moaning and hand-wringing and make a choice and stick with it, so we can focus ALL of our attention on pounding those fucking fascist traitors' dicks into the dirt.