Jim makes a case that, given Joe Biden’s deterioration, the 25th Amendment should have been invoked to remove him from office as early as 2023.

While he makes a good case on the merits, I think the fact that there wasn’t even a serious discussion about taking this step ultimately shows how toothless the amendment is outside of very extreme cases.

Given that the president taps the vice president and appoints the cabinet, it’s highly unlikely that there would ever be the support to oust the president on these grounds. Everybody knows that, should they attempt such an effort and it fails, their careers would be over, and their party would be stuck with the same leader anyway — only he would be significantly weakened by the fact that his loyal officers tried to oust him.

Just consider the weeks-long campaign to get Biden to drop out of the race. The idea of forcing his removal (as opposed to pressuring him to withdraw) was seen as a non-starter. There was a lot of behind the scenes jockeying and reluctance by Democratic leaders to speak candidly in public. Once they got what they wanted and he dropped out, which solved their immediate political crisis, they never bothered to talk about his mental state until after the election. Democrats preferred to have to field uncomfortable questions about how he had to drop out of the race but somehow was still fit to remain as president.

The 25th Amendment, practically speaking, is just not a good mechanism for removing a president from office unless it’s an extreme case, such as when former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a severe stroke and spent his remaining years in a vegetative state. Barring something like that, I just don’t think our politics will make it feasible that the president would be removed via 25th Amendment.