The first presidential debate is next Tuesday, and I don't see Biden surviving.  His campaign has been playing "hide the Crypt-Keeper" since spring, occasionally proving to the public that he's still ticking by having him tussle with a teleprompter while "objective journalists" participate in make-believe interviews.  Biden's cognitive decline is now so steep that he begins reading pre-written answers to pre-written questions, forgets what he's doing halfway through, and settles for stringing syllables together that sound English-y in a non–native speaker sort of way.  He is a man forever in search of a thought but finding none, while the press corps propping up his campaign pretends otherwise.  All I hear when Old Joe speaks is Grampa Simpson saying, "If I'm not back at the home by nine, they declare me legally dead and collect my insurance."  That might be his best excuse for getting out of the debate in Cleveland.  If America sees the real "Sundown" Joe after dusk, this race is over.

Don't do it, Joe!  Getting murdered on national television is no way to end a 47-year career as a Washington welcome mat.  It would be better to concede the contest right now than to endure the beating coming your way.  Even if he plays nice, President Trump is going to smack you around so viciously that you'll forget that China's Xi is your real daddy.  You'll leave the debate stage looking more charred than a Kenosha business after a BLM "peaceful protest."  Better to get in the ring with UFC fighter Colby Covington and endure his beating than take what President Trump has on tap.  Run, Joe, run!  You don't want what's coming.

With only days remaining to find a good place to hide, though, Slow Joe sure does sound as though he's gonna show.  Isn't that why his campaign has been airing him out lately and dragging him from one painted circle in desolate isolation to the next while he struggles through limited remarks before running away from handpicked reporters who ask only flattering "yes or no" questions?  We haven't seen this much energy from the Biden campaign since Jill chose Kamala to be her running mate.  There's been speculation for months that the basement-dwelling, hair-sniffing groper would never submit himself for examination next to President Trump where the nation could so easily judge the president's vitality against Biden's rigor mortis.  Standing side by side, President Trump will appear to have sucked the life right from Biden's Washington establishment corpse.  But here we are only days away from Round One of Trump vs. Chump, and Team Grope still hasn't thrown in the towel.  

I can think of only three explanations.

(1) Hidin' Biden is about to announce the mother of all dog-ate-my-homework excuses for not showing up.  The smart money was always on some last-minute demand that Joe be surrounded by Candy Crowley–like "fact-checkers" to interrupt President Trump's answers with Ministry of Truth real-time spin.  (It's amazing that having 99% of "journalists" actively working on their behalf still isn't sufficient for the Democrats to win this election; in their minds, a fair debate requires President Trump to go up against his opponent, the moderator, and a team of Democrat political operatives posing as reporters all at once while he's busy bringing peace to the Middle East.)  But now the more likely subterfuge would take advantage of Justice Ginsburg's passing.  If the Biden campaign releases a statement in the next few days claiming that Joe refuses to debate unless President Trump agrees to hold off on nominating a new Supreme Court justice, the press will be absolutely giddy.  How brave!  And smart!  What a real leader!  The grifters at the Lincoln Project will be beside themselves.  Ol' Hidin' can run away from the coming beating under the cover of Justice Ginsburg's funerary procession, and Jake Tapper and Chris Wallace will applaud his cowardice.  It will be just like when Obama prostrated himself before Iran and called it courage, so it would be nothing new for Joe.

(2) Perhaps the Democrats don't expect their Trojan horse candidate to survive the first debate, either.  There's no faster path toward swapping Kamala Harris for the Washington relic with a segregationist past than to push Old Joe's body past its natural limits.  Obama's former sidekick can sacrifice himself on the altar of diversity by ensuring that Obama's preferred candidate is crowned queen before voting has really begun.  Kamala was always the candidate of the deep-pocketed money class, the Hollywood glams, and the "new guard" Obama loyalists running the DNC, but she failed so spectacularly during the campaign that she was forced to bow out of the race two months before the Iowa caucuses.  Now the power behind the Democrat curtain can turn one of last year's biggest losers into the official nominee just by riding Old Joe Biden to his grave.  For the Democrats, everything's for the "greater good," right?  From their point of view, what could possibly be better than juicing Ol' Sundown with one of "Dr. Feelgood's" magic concoctions of steroids and amphetamines that sends him up the debate stage in such euphoria that he hardly notices when his heart explodes?  There's a reason President Trump keeps bringing up the possibility of a drug test for Joe before next Tuesday.  Joe Biden on speed doesn't make his incoherence suddenly comprehensible.  It pushes him right to death's door and leaves Kamala Harris, a woman who has proven she will say and do anything for power, one ballot-harvested election away from the Oval Office.  

(3) Hidin' Biden and the Democrats may actually believe that Joe can beat President Trump mano a mano.  That seems crazy, but then again, it seemed crazy six months ago when the Democrats decided to run for election by looting small businesses, beating up strangers, and burning American cities to the ground.  Never underestimate the power of the Democrats' "reality distortion field" to convince them that real, everyday Americans are behind their radical agenda to rip up the Constitution, topple the Washington Monument, and usher in a Marxist utopia that rules over the heartland for a thousand years.  Every step of the way, the Democrats have underestimated Donald Trump.  They expected Hillary to destroy him with ease.  They expected the Mueller-Weissmann special counsel inquisition to save Washington from the voters' reckoning.  They expected President Trump to cower from their use of the CIA and FBI to remove him from office.  They expected his use of tariffs against China and his realignment of power in Asia to backfire against him.  They expected his push for Middle East peace to fail.  They expected his moves to strengthen our relationship with Poland and other Central European countries to achieve nothing.  They expected his pro-American economic growth policies, strong defense of America's heritage, and bold support for the unborn to somehow turn off black and Hispanic Americans.  Every step of the way, they've miscalculated.  

So maybe they're really about to send Joe Biden into his own bloodbath at the hands of President Trump this Tuesday, and they really are too stupid to know what's about to happen.  One way or another, come September 29, it's lights out for Sundown Joe. 

Hat tip to "Surfthewaves."

Image: Marc Nozell via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.