NBC News reports:

Democrats are in an unprecedented crisis over who should be their presidential candidate.

But the party committee that governs the nominating process met Friday and proceeded as if everything was normal and its entire plan was not at risk of being upended at any minute.

As calls mount for President Joe Biden to step aside and let another Democrat lead the party into the November election against former President Donald Trump, the Democratic National Convention’s Rules Committee held a virtual meeting where the message to delegates was, essentially: Everything is proceeding as planned.

The meeting was convened to discuss plans for a virtual roll call vote to formally nominate Biden weeks before the convention, but no votes were taken or decisions made. Instead, party leaders used the meeting to inform the nearly 200 members of the committee about the process that is currently planned, which they had already laid out in a letter earlier this week.

The committee will meet again no later than Friday, July 26, to consider adopting the virtual roll call process, which would not be held until the first week of August.

The virtual roll call idea has plenty of detractors inside the party, but the only hint of dissent in the meeting came in questions about whether other candidates could be nominated for the virtual roll call (answer: technically yes, but actually, probably not). Otherwise, the virtual meeting was uneventful — despite starting moments after four more Democratic members of Congress called on Biden to step aside.

Party leaders like Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison spoke repeatedly about his excitement to “renominate President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris” and to promote the “Biden-Harris ticket.”

Leah Daughtry, a longtime Democratic rules expert and the co-chair of the Rules Committee, joked about trying to turn the committee members into “rules geeks” by the end of the process.

And convention Executive Director Alex Hornbrook, appearing from his office in Chicago with a large, red “Biden” banner over his left shoulder, gushed about the exciting events planned for next month’s convention and touted that the convention is credentialing social media influencers just like traditional reporters to help “tell the story of the Biden-Harris accomplishments” to young people.

The purpose of the meeting was to lay out the party’s proposed fix to a paperwork problem that has been causing some outsize heartburn for Democrats as they debate whether Biden should remain their nominee. [Continue reading…]