The preference cascade has begun -- at least among donors. 

Earlier in the week, James Carville told big-ticket Democrat funders to close their checkbooks to anyone supporting Joe Biden's continued presence on the ticket. Disney heiress Abigail Disney went one step further yesterday. In a statement to CNBC, Disney announced that she wouldn't donate a dime to Democrats at all until Biden withdraws:

Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, who co-founded The Walt Disney Co., told CNBC on Thursday that she plans to withhold donations to the party she has funded for years until Biden drops out. The president has said he has no plans to withdraw from the race, despite calls for him to do so.

“I intend to stop any contributions to the party unless and until they replace Biden at the top of the ticket.  This is realism, not disrespect. Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high,” Abigail Disney said in a lengthy statement to CNBC. “If Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”

So how would Abigail propose to solve the Kamala Conundrum? Actually, that's where Disney's statement gets a little ... spicy. Disney claims the Kamala Conundrum doesn't actually exist, and that Democrats worried about Vice President Word Salad are just exhibiting latent racism and sexism.

No, really:

“We have an excellent Vice President.  If Democrats would tolerate any of her perceived shortcomings even one tenth as much as they have tolerated Biden’s (and let’s not kid ourselves about where race and gender figure in that inequity) and if Democrats can find a way to stop quibbling and rally around her, we can win this election by a lot,” Disney said.

That's not even subtle. It's a line in the sand that will reverberate around the Democrat Party and make it even less possible to deal with the Kamala Conundrum, which absolutely exists. Disney can chalk up her bad approval and favorability ratings to racism and sexism to her heart's content, but Harris earned those low marks with four years of word salads, circular rhetoric, babble nearly as incoherent as Biden's, and a complete lack of campaigning ability. The Democrat Party was poised to hand her the nomination in 2019 -- the money and the primary had lined up almost perfectly for her as the Biden alternative -- until she proved herself to be utterly incompetent as a candidate.

However delusional Disney may be here, she's at least previewing what will happen within the party if Biden does withdraw. The party will want to find someone more popular than Biden or Harris to replace him in order to boost chances of turnout saving some down-ballot races. After all, Harris participated in the cover-up of Biden's incapacity; they need someone from the outside to avoid the scandal, and a scandal it will be if Biden is forced to withdraw. But any attempt to be rational will be met with a firestorm of identitarian rage along the lines Disney drew in her statement. Democrats will completely melt down over the fight, or they will have to willingly commit political suicide.

More on that later. CNBC goes on to report that megadonor Gideon Stein has paused his planned $3.5 million in donations to Dem PACs related to the presidential race as long as Biden remains on the ticket, too. Karla Jurvetson, who spent $30 million in 2020 on behalf of Democrats, has apparently also taken Carville's advice, although that's not yet official, apparently. 

That's a lot of cash to take out of a national-election cycle, and it won't just impact the presidential race. In fact, Biden/Harris has $240 million in cash at the moment and can probably ride out big-ticket defections for a while. It's the down-ballot Democrats that will feel the pinch, and right when they need support the most.

The donor preference cascade will only be the beginning. Carville was right; donors can drive Democrats into abandoning Biden if that's what they want. And that looks exactly what they want now.