[Program Note: Once again, this week we are dispensing with our normal Friday format, as it truly was a one-issue week, and this made it all but impossible to come up with our usual awards and talking points. Instead, we have to weigh in on the subject at hand, because it is so important.]

This week, the nation celebrated its 248th birthday. (Feel free to insert a "Biden's so old" joke here, if you wish....)

It's been a rather excruciating week, aside from enjoying the fireworks last night. The entire political media universe has been completely consumed with the question of whether President Joe Biden is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump, or whether he should instead gracefully step aside and allow the Democrats to nominate someone younger who might have a better chance at victory in November. We have to admit, we've never really seen anything like this (but then we are too young to remember Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968). The pressure on Biden seems to only be growing, day by day, as more and more people come to the conclusion that Democrats would be better served with a new nominee.

The reason for all this angst, of course, was Biden's disastrous debate performance last Thursday. He was supposed to use it as a way to shake up the race and remind voters just how dangerous Donald Trump would be as president again. Unfortunately, what happened instead is that Biden shook up the race by proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is old -- too old, perhaps, to do the job effectively for another four years.

Team Biden then tried to do some damage control, but without any noticeable impact. They circled the White House wagons and pressured other elected Democrats to give their full-throated support to Joe. However, what was noticeably missing in all this was Joe himself. Biden has done very little to assuage Democrats' concerns all week long, appearing only briefly at a handful of scripted events (where he took no questions). He did show up for one rally the day after the debate, where he turned in an impressive performance -- full of energy, rallying the troops -- but it was only one event. It's been more than a week, and there aren't a whole lot of weeks left on the campaign calendar.

Today Biden hopes to turn things around, but it's really being seen as his last shot. The president flew to Wisconsin to hold a rally, but the big news will come tonight when ABC will air a sit-down interview with the president that is going to be his make-or-break moment. If the interview with George Stephanopoulos goes well it might allay some of the fears Democrats have been expressing, but if Biden stumbles at all during the interview the calls for him to step aside are going to get a whole lot louder and impossible to ignore.

One key question is how long the interview will be. ABC has scheduled a whole hour for the broadcast, after first indicating that the interview would be chopped up into little bits and meted out over the course of the weekend. Thankfully, they realized this was not the way to go (since naysayers would insist that they had edited out any gaffes or senior moments), and they now are going to air the whole thing in its entirety tonight. But one rumor making the rounds was that the White House was only going to allow Biden to speak for "15 or maybe 20 minutes," which would be a serious mistake. In the first place, that's not enough to put to rest the fears that Biden doesn't have the sharpness or stamina to campaign effectively, and in the second place it would mean ABC would have to fill the rest of the hour with talking heads discussing how old Biden is -- which is not the message Team Biden really wants to highlight.

Tonight's interview will be historic, one way or another. It will either be seen as Biden making a big comeback, or it will be the straw that broke the Democratic donkey's back and lead to plans to replace Biden at the top of the ticket. A lot is riding on it, in other words.

Of course, the question of whether Joe Biden was the best candidate to take on Donald Trump this time around is not a new one. Ever since Biden announced his re-election bid, some people have been wondering at the wisdom of such a course. Joe Biden, should he win a second term in office, will be 86 years old before he leaves the White House. That's old. Way old. Even setting aside the question of the election itself (whether a younger candidate might have a better chance), the real question voters will face is whether Biden can lead the country for four more years. It's not just a question of Biden's mental capacities right now, in other words, it is a question of where he'll be years from now. And aging is a one-way road -- he's not going to suddenly snap out of it and "get better" any time soon.

The political media has been in an absolute feeding frenzy all week long. Tiny details are breathlessly reported, none of them good for Biden. He needs more sleep, and has instructed staff not to schedule events after 8:00 at night, we are told. If this is true now, what is he going to be like four years from now? It is depressing to contemplate, that's for sure.

Joe Biden was always going to have a tough time winning again. His job approval ratings are terrible. No sitting president with ratings this low has ever won re-election -- and that was true even before the debate happened. Since then, his head-to-head polling against Trump has gotten worse. Sticking with Biden seems to be an exercise in futility for the Democrats, absent some game-changing event that shakes up the race in some positive way for Biden.

Of course, the only one who will decide what happens next is Joe Biden. The party can't force him off the ticket, he has already won that honor in the primaries. If he chooses to continue running there is little that anyone else can do to stop him. But the pressure for him to drop out will likely continue to grow no matter what happens at this point. Biden could knock it out of the park tonight and turn in the best interview performance ever seen and people will still be talking about whether sticking with Biden is the right way to go or not.

Major newspaper editorial boards have already called on Biden to get out of the race. A few Democratic congressmen have publicly called on him to step aside. Up until now, the rest of the Democrats in Congress have either stuck by Biden or remained quiet, but it's really impossible to see this movement just somehow going away. If Biden does continue to campaign, his every utterance will be scrutinized for possible mental lapses and any flaws will be widely discussed. His energy levels will also be the subject of much speculation.

To state the painfully obvious, this is not what we would consider a winning strategy. Far from it.

This must be incredibly painful for Joe Biden and for all those close to him. Biden has long seen himself as the man to save America from the nightmare of Trump winning, and he certainly proved last time he was up to that task. But thinking that he's the only one who can beat Trump smacks of narcissism, at this point. "I am the only one who can save the country" is a line Trump uses, after all. For Biden to argue the same thing just makes voters wonder more about the electoral process that left us all with this choice. Is this really the best America can do, when deciding who should lead the country?

Stepping aside is going to be an agonizing thing for Biden to do. Who would walk away from all that power, after all? Biden still nurtures a belief that he can turn it all around and emerge victorious, but as time goes by fewer and fewer other people are buying into that dream.

If Biden doesn't knock it out of the park in tonight's interview, then the discussions Democrats are now having about a possible Plan B are going to get more intense. So far the number of officeholders calling on Joe to step down has been minimal, but at the same time it is rumored that a letter is being circulated among them saying the same thing. If Biden has a weak performance tonight, then the best bet is that next week (when Congress returns to Washington) a lot more Democrats are going to sign that letter.

Joe Biden is not currently seen as leading his party to victory. There is a true crisis of confidence among Democrats, which already could be the death knell for Biden's candidacy. If he can't even get his own party members on board, how is he going to convince enough voters to do the same? The problem for Biden now is that he's essentially got to be perfect. He can hold excellent rally after excellent rally, but the media is always going to be looking for the next thing to pounce on.

To be sure, this isn't really fair. Donald Trump is not subject to the same level of scrutiny, mostly because he has always flubbed his facts, made things up out of thin air, and mangled the English language. So for him, the media shrugs and says: "Eh, that's just Trump being Trump." But fair or not, this is Biden's reality now.

More and more Democrats are becoming more and more open to the idea of a Plan B. It would be an enormous gamble, of course, but then so would sticking with Joe. The conventional wisdom is that an open convention with a big floor fight would somehow be harmful to Democrats, but it sure would generate some real excitement in both the media and the public. It'd be the most significant reality television ever. And with Donald Trump as the Republican candidate, it's probably a safe bet that the Democrats will not hold factional grudges after the convention but will instead unite behind their nominee. Amongst all the doom-and-gloom stories last week, we came across one article that highlighted in a very positive way the possibilities naming someone new could bring:

Unscripted TV, on the other hand, is now the closest thing we have to a culturally shared experience, outside of the Super Bowl. What is the genesis of Trump, if not a national thirst for unscripted entertainment? He represents the triumph of personality over party, a creation not of politics, but of everything that is impolitic and impolite.

If Biden were to accept reality and step aside, for once, Democrats would have a genuine opportunity to match Trump's theatrical dominance. What better way to recast yourself with the electorate than through a gripping, episodic fight for leadership? What could draw more people into politics than a must-watch nightly drama, with the fate of the nation at stake? I have to believe that Trump -- a modern-day P.T. Barnum who feeds off the boring artifice of his adversaries -- fears that spectacle more than anything.

And in a political age in which familiarity breeds distrust, what could be more advantageous than choosing a nominee -- preferably one from outside Washington -- with only two months to campaign? Imagine the explosion of interest that would surround some fresh, non-octogenarian -- Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Gina Raimondo, Josh Shapiro -- during a 10-week barnstorming tour. How's Trump going to handle that?

It's a good point. We already live in the age of political spectacle. Entertainment value is a lot more important than it used to be, in politics. Handled right, the Democratic National Convention could do what few people have ever been able to do -- shove Trump out of the headlines. Once the winner emerged, it would be up to them to keep the momentum going and (for once) be seen as forcing Trump to react, rather than the other way around. That could be unbelievably effective.

We have to say that we are warming to the idea of a Kamala Harris campaign. No, she is not our first choice of which Democrat we'd like to see in the Oval Office next, but she's acceptable enough, at this point. Biden anointing her heir apparent would throw his still-considerable political weight behind her, which might be enough to guarantee her the nomination at the convention. Then Democrats could have a big power struggle to see who would be named her vice-presidential candidate instead (which would be just as exciting, but far more manageable).

This all harkens back to the "smoke-filled back rooms" days in American politics, of course. Instead of the voters deciding, a major party's nominee could be chosen by a few thousand delegates at the national convention. It would be the first time in half a century the selection would be made solely by party elites. But the unifying force in all of it is still going to be Donald Trump. Defeating Trump is seen as so critical to the future of American democracy that petty differences between Democrats are going to get smoothed over pretty quickly.

If the convention does pick a new nominee, then he or she will have to hit the ground running in a big way. But all of a sudden the race will have gotten exciting again, instead of being a race between two candidates nobody really wanted to see on a ballot again. And the new candidate would be a major contrast from the lackadaisical style of campaigning that Biden has been doing so far, injecting some youthful vigor into the process and generating some excitement among the voters.

In fact, this is what the convention fight is going to be centered on. Not the ideology of the candidate, not their policy positions, not their own political history -- instead the choice will be made on one criterion alone: Who would have the best chance to beat Trump? Who can go toe to toe with him? Who can counteract his firehose of lies? Who can stand up to the playground bully the best? Who will excite undecided voters more? That is the only thing that really matters, at this point.

Calling for Joe Biden to walk away from his re-election bid is a painful thing to do. It would be incredibly risky, with the stakes enormous. But it would certainly inject some drama into the contest that has been all but absent up to this point.

So we will watch tonight's interview to see what Biden can do, but remain highly skeptical that even a phenomenal interview can truly turn things around for the Biden campaign. The damage seems like it has already been done. Which is why, with a heavy heart, we have to conclude that of the two risky paths in front of the Democratic Party right now, picking a new presidential candidate would be less risky than sticking with the one we've got. Thanks for everything you've done... but it's time to go, Joe.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant