A major party’s presumptive nominee enmeshed in multiple sexual harassment and assault scandals dropping out months before the general election is the sort of thing that seems like it could never actually happen — until it does. My bet is still that Joe Biden will power through the uproar over Tara Reade and accept the Democratic nomination in a few months down the road, but I’m not a fortune teller, and neither is anyone else.

Nevertheless, several other people have begun to game out what would happen in Biden were to drop out this late in the race. Some of the darker conspiracies imagine an endgame where Andrew Cuomo or Hillary Clinton are installed by party leaders at the convention, while writers like Alex Pareene imagine a less dramatic scenario: Biden withdraws, his opponents reenter the race, and the primary resumes. Again, I do not think any of this is very likely, but since so many possibilities have been put on the table I feel compelled, as a matter of due diligence, to make a simple point: if Biden leaves, Bernie Sanders will have the strongest claim to the nomination.