The proposal comes as pressure mounts for Biden to drop out of the race following his stumbling June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump. The president’s debate performance raised alarm bells among Democratic strategists, lawmakers, donors and voters, heightening long-standing concerns about Biden’s age and ability to beat Trump.
Brooks said she and Dintersmith initially sent the memo on Tuesday to dozens of influential Democrats, including major donors, Biden appointees and campaign leaders.
As Brooks put it in an interview with CNBC, they sent the plan to “everyone we thought might have an influence on the president’s decision-making.”
The proposal includes several key steps, starting with Biden announcing he will withdraw from the race in mid-July in a “speech for eternity,” as the memo’s authors envision it.
“Biden will be hailed overnight as a modern-day George Washington, not an octogenarian clinging to power with a 37% approval rating,” the bill reads. “From goat to hero.”
The next phase of the plan is a “blitz primary,” in which potential Democratic candidates file their nominations and delegates at the Democratic National Convention ultimately narrow the field to six candidates.
According to the memo, the hypothetical accelerated primary would require a massive social media campaign to engage voters, including forums between the candidates led by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift or Stephen Colbert.
Brooks and Dintersmith’s vision ends with delegates voting on the eventual nominee at the DNC, which would theoretically benefit from the increased television ratings and donations resulting from the viral hype of the preceding blitz primaries.
Brooks, who stressed that she is not a political strategist, said the proposal should be treated more as a living document and that many details of the plan have changed as Democrats who have seen the memo have played hypothetically with its ideas.
“We know we are not in a position to define what is actually happening, but we are so encouraged by the uniform response: ‘Wow! If something like this happened, it would lift America out of our current malaise,’” Dintersmith said in an email to CNBC.
Since the proposal was first submitted on Tuesday, Brooks said they’ve received dozens of comments, most of which have been positive about the plan, even though the chances of it actually being implemented are slim.
“The tone was very much, ‘Oh my God, this is probably impossible, but what a great idea,’” Brooks said.
She added that as time passes, people are starting to see the plan as more feasible: “In the space of a few days, it’s gone from ‘Oh, this would be great if it could happen, but it probably can’t’ to ‘Why can’t it?'”
Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposal.