Will Democrats keep on keeping on with Joe Biden or will they start swimming in a different direction?

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Two roads diverge in the wood of Democratic presidential politics in the wake of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week. There’s fog on both of them. They’re both roads not taken before.

One of those paths might take its trail sign from the 1960s civil rights-era balladeer Len Chandler. The title of his song is Keep on Keeping On.

The other trail marker is also from the 1960s, this time from the folksinger Bob Dylan. The relevant lyric line is “You better start swimmin’/Or you’ll sink like a stone.”

Whether the Democrats keep on keeping on and retain Mr. Biden at the top of their November ticket – or whether they start swimmin’ in a different direction to avoid sinking like that stone – is the question of the hour. No question like this has ever been posed in American politics.

“We don’t know what the next 72 hours will bring,” a senior member of Congress said Sunday morning. The Globe and Mail agreed not to name them because they fear political repercussions for speaking out.

Here’s a look at the two principal options, acknowledging that there may be some others:

Keep on keeping on

This plainly is the choice of the White House, at least for now, perhaps through the autumn – and into a second debate, which former president Donald Trump doesn’t necessarily want and surely doesn’t need. Mr. Biden’s handlers are calling him the Comeback Kid, a phrase they purloined from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign after details of an extramarital affair and his manoeuvring to avoid the draft emerged in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary. That frosty evening, he adapted that name … after finishing in second place. (He eventually won the nomination – and the White House.)

There is every evidence that this is the impulse of the Bidenistas, a notion held by family members, especially the President’s wife, Jill – though there are inklings that Mr. Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, may not share that view. There are several strains to the tough-it-out argument, which is more complex than what meets the eye.

Here are the elements: The President actually defeated Mr. Trump once and may be the only one who can beat him again. Mr. Biden is a wonderful fellow, well loved by his aides and a loyal servant to party and country, and thus deserves another chance. It’s too late to make a switch; the party’s mechanism is like the Russian military in the late days before the beginning of the First World War, where once it is mobilized in one direction it cannot be recalled and restarted. Anyway, there’s plenty of time, Mr. Trump is a Fourth of July firecracker who could misfire at any time, and he and the Republican Party could be in the same perilous position by Labour Day as the Democrats are now.

Recognize they are sinking like a stone

This is far more complicated. How Mr. Biden comes to this decision – for it is his to make, and no one can make it for him – will be the mystery of midsummer. But if he does – if Ms. Biden decides to persuade him his dignity is at stake; if a delegation of party elders tells him he owes the country one last grand gesture of sacrifice – then a way forward has to be found.

One is releasing his convention delegates – they’re not legally bound, but morally tied to him – and then throw the choice to the Chicago conclave in late August. Vice-President Kamala Harris and other presidential aspirants then would conduct the kind of campaign that Americans haven’t seen since 1952: among convention delegates rather than among primary voters and caucus attendees.

Senior Democrats – Nancy Pelosi (who at 84 is three years older than the President), maybe Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with former Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry – settle on a fresh ticket and tell the party that this decision, while in conflict with the party’s 1972 reforms designed to remove such decisions from prominent party members and devolve them to the voters, is the best – the only – way to avoid a second Trump presidency.

This meeting of a Democratic college of cardinals would, to be sure, be redolent of the old Blackstone Hotel in the convention city of Chicago. It was there, in a “smoke-filled room” of lore and legend in 1920, that Republican bosses settled on a non-entity, senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, as their presidential nominee. It was messy but effective. Harding won in a landslide over governor James M. Cox, also of Ohio.

Then the process becomes interesting – which is to say full of intrigue. Who do these party savants select? Some Democrats are talking about holding a series of job interviews with potential nominees, particularly governors such as Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), Roy Cooper (North Carolina), Andy Beshear (Kentucky), Tim Walz (Minnesota) and Gavin Newsom (California). Ms. Whitmer and Mr. Shapiro are from swing states. A ticket with both could vastly improve the party’s prospects and present a profile of youthful, forward-looking leadership. Other combinations might accomplish the same thing.

Either way, the Democrats are in peril, and their panic is neither premature nor unjustified.

There is increased talk of Mr. Biden making an Independence Day declaration of sacrifice Thursday. There is just as much talk of the President carrying on as if (almost) nothing happened last week. And there is talk of the President resigning soon, catapulting Ms. Harris to the White House and selecting a running mate for her – perhaps Mr. Walz of Minnesota – at the convention. But right now, it’s all talk. That’s what politicians do best, when two roads diverge in the wood.