Joe Biden hadn’t even creakily crawled off the debate stage yet and the phones were already ringing.

Yank him.

That was the message.

Too old. Decrepit. Unfit for a showdown with Donald Trump, who looked positively virile – the exact word of one Democrat – by comparison.

Inevitably, the phones shook in Jersey, typically an ATM machine for national campaigns, and long a go-to trough for Biden.

Phil and Tammy Murphy dug in with a scheduled fundraiser for the president at their home.

“Tammy can at least get a cabinet position if the president wins reelection – but I don’t know now,” a party source glumly told InsiderNJ.

“It doesn’t look good.”

Panic didn’t quite set in among most of the party leaders, however.

Bossism is basically a static condition in New Jersey, so much like an iguana on sunny rocks might be slow to react, Biden’s onstage troubles failed to pervade with any urgency.

A few others were ready to find a bridge to dive off of if they couldn’t jump to the head of a parade with a replacement ticket for the party in time for the August convention.

So, who did they talk about in some of those frantic phone conversations?

Josh Shapiro’s name came up.

Governor from Pennsylvania. Proven winner in a battleground state. Good state. Good guy. Smart guy. Smart as a whip. Unlike – well, you get the picture. Plus, he’s from a neighboring state, just like Biden. Good for New Jersey.

So, Shapiro-Kamala Harris, that sounds…

Well, no.

“We’ll have to dump Harris.”

If Biden hit the bricks, she’d get the heave ho, too.

In those conversations, Cory Booker’s name surfaced.

Shapiro-Booker.

Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? One party member asked InsiderNJ.

Maybe, but it’s a little early for back-to-school office supplies.

Ok, ok.

Well, what about Shapiro-Wes Moore.

Wes Moore is the governor of Maryland, and such an unknown quantity in these ghettoized parts that on several occasions more than one source referred to him as “Westmoreland,” a general who had some trouble in Vietnam, and, incidentally, is dead. So, he’d be out. And maybe worse than Biden.

Other names besides Shapiro leading the ticket?

Gavin Newsom came up.

The governor of California.

An Essex source – party leader – said he likes Newsom. High tech. High energy. Can relate to him.

But can he win a battleground?

The phone went dead.

What about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer?

Battleground state. Tough chief executive. Almost kidnapped by a bunch of right-wing nuts. Can take the fight to Trump.

People like the idea.

But does she want the job?

Whitmer seldom readily communicated a voracious appetite to be president, the opposite of someone like, well, Gavin Newsom, who looks like he walks around with an Oval Office drape measurer the way Neymar keeps in tow Billy Idol’s hairdresser.

Anyone else.

Michelle Obama.

The ultimate panic button candidate.

And beloved.

Why, exactly?

Well, she was married to that other guy. Wasn’t he a president?

“I’d vote for her,” a source lazily opined, as if she might withhold her vote from the others on principle – or something.

Anyway, it was grim.

As InsiderNJ columnist Fred Snowflack wrote this morning, many sources wanted the party to instantaneously pull the plug on Biden, and if clusters of leaders got that message from the rank and file, they wanted to make sure they maintained an edge and didn’t find themselves, if not in ballot Siberia of all places, well then shuffling down an empty side street with the sitting president, accompanied by the faintest sounds of an unreachable brass band playing jubilantly in the distance.

What do you think?