Say, guess who else wants to become unburdened by what has been? Joe Manchin rather famously and noisily left the Democrat Party two months ago, attempting to rehab his image in West Virginia. Now that Joe Biden has retired from the Democrat nomination, suddenly the man who left No Labels twisting in the wind for months is considering a return to run for the nomination himself.

Of course, Manchin being Manchin, he hadn't actually decided to do it. But CBS News' Robert Costa reported late yesterday that he's letting his interest be known:

Manchin had just been on CBS' Face the Nation urging Biden to withdraw, and demanding that there be a "new generation" to take over the Democrat Party. Manchin is, of course, seventy-six years old, only five years younger than Biden, at least chronologically. Margaret Brennan asked Manchin directly if he'd take the lower spot on the ticket if Kamala Harris became the nominee:

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, if you go through this open – open process…

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Right. Right. Right. Right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: … before the convention, and Kamala Harris, the vice president, emerges as the nominee, would you be able to support her?

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Well, it depends on what the policies are. I want to see the platform change.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Would you be con – would you be interested…

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I would consider. Sure, I would consider.

MARGARET BRENNAN: … in a vice presidential spot on that ticket, yourself?

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: It's not me. No, forget about me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You're not going to run?

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: No. This is a new generation, Margaret. 

What a difference a day an afternoon makes! Or maybe Manchin's only interested in the top spot, which is understandable if Harris sits at the top. Why spend three months of your life trying to explain her word salads, which will necessarily have to come with much greater frequency as the nominee for the top spot?

Of course, by this morning, Manchin had already backed away:

NEW: @Sen_JoeManchin tells @CBSMornings: “I am not running for office” but says he’s concerned there isn’t going to be a contest to pick a new nominee. Calls for a “vigorous, maybe three week process.”

When asked by @GayleKing if @KamalaHarris is “too far left,” Manchin says,…

— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) July 22, 2024

When asked by @GayleKing if @KamalaHarris  is “too far left,” Manchin says, “Absolutely.”

So will she be the appointed nominee? Everyone yesterday apparently forgot that Harris never ran in the primaries. The delegates won by Biden -- 99% of the full complement -- will get released by his withdrawal, but are now under no obligation to vote for his running mate. As Axios reported late yesterday too, Harris has to woo the delegates into choosing her based on Biden's endorsement. 

And state party chairs may not hold a vote quite yet, Hans Nichols reports:

State party chairs — who have some control over the nearly 4,000 delegates who will formally pick the party's nominee — are holding a call Sunday afternoon to discuss the party's options and the process going forward.

• Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement Sunday that Democrats will "undertake a transparent and orderly process" to select a candidate "who can defeat" Trump in November.
• But the DNC hasn't clarified whether it still plans to hold a "virtual roll call" of delegates in early August and finish the voting by Aug. 7, nearly two weeks before the party's convention in Chicago.
• Some state party chairs have called for the nominee to be chosen at the convention, but DNC officials say that could open up the ticket to legal challenges from Republicans.

House Speaker Mike Johnson promised a little lawfare over a switcheroo like this, but parties have the right to choose their nominees. Legal challenges may have been a greater threat in a scenario where Democrats changed the rules to oust an unwilling Biden from the ticket. Now that Biden has officially withdrawn, however, Democrats clearly can't proceed with their usual process. The only real issue is state-ballot deadlines, which the GOP will contest anyway, and the only state at real risk was Ohio ... which changed the law two months ago to accommodate the Democrat convention. 

Democrats still want to hold a virtual vote to avoid an open convention in Chicago, but that won't work if other candidates toss their hats in the ring. Manchin pulled his usual Hamlet act, but others may well follow, thinking Harris is too radical and too unpopular to succeed in November. Biden won 99% of the delegates, but they come from different factions of the party, including the No F*****g Way Kamala Wins faction. At the very least, these delegates will want to consider all of the options before going into a virtual vote, or any other kind of nominating vote.

And that basically guarantees an open convention of one sort or another. There are too many ambitious Democrats -- and too many in leadership in the NFWKW faction -- to avoid it. Even if it takes place over the next two weeks and the DNC tries to force a vote in the second week of August, the debate over the nomination will take place because delegates will not want to be buffaloed into yet another bad choice by Democrat establishmentarians or the hard-Left progressive activists either. 

Kamala Harris will have to campaign for this nomination. She's already started by working the phones, but she did that with donors on Friday too ... and that turned into a disaster:

Ms. Harris spoke to the group at a time of extraordinary turmoil among Democrats, with many hoping that she will replace Mr. Biden as the party’s nominee. But several listeners said they found the meeting overall to be of little value and even, at times, condescending, believing that the message ignored donors’ legitimate concerns about the Biden-led ticket. ...

“Not surprisingly, there was no news generated on this call, and instead, it was a pitch for donors to continue to invest in groups on the ground who are working to defeat Donald Trump,” read an email from Corridor Partners, which advises donors focused on climate issues. “The vice president spoke very briefly and encouraged us all to keep working hard to win in November.”

The email, which was viewed by The New York Times, added, “The call was not productive, and we wanted to apologize to each of you who joined for sharing that invitation.”

Not exactly a propitious start for the presumed new leader of the party, right? There is a very real chance that Harris' campaign skills will convince these delegates that they have to look for someone else, in order to be unburdened of what has been. More likely, as others start throat-clearing about their intentions, the delegates and state parties will use the convention to choose the nominee, which was their original purpose ... before parties decided to use popular democracy rather than party bosses to nominate presidential candidates. But even if no one immediately declares their candidacy, enough delegates could choose to hold out for a true convention to settle the matter, and that would incentivize the ambitious to make their moves quickly. 

In that sense, the open convention has already begun. Democrats can't escape it, nor can they escape the consequences of it, either. They may well rue the day that the Dump Biden movement actually succeeded.