A week into an unprecedented election-year crisis surrounding the Democratic candidate’s fitness for office, it’s still not clear what exactly is going to happen with Joe Biden. The president’s defiant tone to Democrats has contrasted with the reportedly less assured stance he took while speaking to a key ally, while momentum for his ouster is building among Democrats and center-left mainstream media in the face of terrible polling following a debate performance that horrified the country and world.

Fears of what might happen if the party replaces its standard-bearer at this late hour — or, more specifically, if it hands the keys to Vice President Kamala Harris — are swirling. They shouldn’t. The reality is that replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee, if not the acting president, would be a significant upside for Democrats, providing a chance for a genuine reset that few parties get in the middle of a failing election campaign and letting them pivot away from the disastrous direction Biden has taken them over the past year and a half.

It’s somehow already been forgotten that, over the past eight years, Democrats have had two real-world tests of what does and doesn’t work to win presidential elections, and elections against Donald Trump specifically. The first came in 2016, when they ran on nothing but how scary the other guy was and did little to win over progressive voters besides telling them they had no choice. That proved a failure. The second time, in 2020, when they made common cause with progressives to jointly produce and run on a fairly ambitious populist agenda, proved a success.