The expression, “Three Strikes! You’re Out!” we learn from baseball in grade school or even earlier. It can come about in two or three ways. If a batter with two strikes swings and misses, it’s strike three. If the batter tips the ball and the catcher manages to catch it, it’s also third strike. Perhaps most humiliating of all is when he doesn’t swing even though the pitch is over the plate, the umpire calls it a strike and bellows “you’re out.” In recent history, there is a mandatory prison sentence for repeat offenders with a prior record of felonies. In both uses of the expression -- baseball lingo or legal jargon -- the meaning is the same:  With two major offenses, a batter or a criminal offender can sometimes get reprieve or leniency. But by a third offense, everyone knows there are inevitable consequences.  The batter is out, the offender is sentenced.

At this point, the weekend before the election, Joe Biden has run out of strikes and voters need to be aware of that fact and declare him to be out!

Strike One is Biden’s personal circumstances. 

Joe Biden has lived in his basement during most of the COVID shutdown. He’s hardly even taking a swing. In his few appearances, he has shown hints of cognitive decline: he slurs his words, he gets lost in his script even when using a teleprompter, he cannot complete a thought or an argument and he jumps subjects in illogical rambling. When he ventures out for a rally, few people show up and he makes a pathetic attempt at youthfulness by jogging awkwardly toward the podium.  He ostentatiously draws circles where people can sit to maintain “safe distance.” He wears a mask even on camera with nobody else around. He often declares the day done by 10 a.m., putting a “lid” on campaigning events. Before the televised debates, he took multiple days off -- apparently needing to rest before the big event or to reset his circadian rhythms so he’d be at his best for the late-night debates.

As the campaign reached its final days, information came out about an FBI investigation into Hunter Biden’s influence peddling. A computer repairman revealed the existence of Hunter’s laptop left too long at a Delaware shop; the computer’s contents revealed very troubling evidence of loans to the Biden family, questionable pictures of Hunter -- billed by his father as the smartest man he knows -- with young girls (reportedly including some with his 14-year-old niece topless), and other pictures of a decadent drug and sexual lifestyle. The more information comes out, the more troubling the facts and the more connections to the former vice president.

Biden could possible get by with Strike One because there is not enough time to confirm the negative personal information since the media is complicit in keeping everything under wraps.

Strike Two is Biden’s reckless embrace of the far left, radical progressive wing of his party -- especially the Equality Act and Critical Race Theory.

Biden has shouted out his determination to enact far left, radical progressive initiatives on “Day One” of his administration.  He will “end the Muslim Ban on Day 1.”  He will “create a path to citizenship for ‘dreamers,’” He will eliminate the Trump tax cuts; in fact, he will “double the tax and do that on Day 1,” He will repeal liability protections for gun manufacturers. He will strengthen the workers’ unions, end homelessness and give transgenders additional rights.  He will restore Obama-era rules and regulations that Trump rolled back (including the Paris Climate Accord). Most famously, Biden has promised to push the Equality Act that will force employers and workers to conform to the new sexual norms or lose their businesses and jobs. Critical Race Theory training will be required from kindergarten forward, including in the workplace -- this is the ideology whose central premise is that white supremacy is the evil foundation of western culture, history and law and is the source of social, cultural, and political problems.

Biden has made it clear that his vice president, Kamala Harris (the most radical progressive in the Senate who is even to the left of Bernie Sanders) will be a powerful partner and that the Senate Socialists –Ocasio-Cortez plus three and Sanders --  will be influential in his administration.

With these two strikes against him, knowledgeable people who want the best future for this nation should certainly  never vote for Biden, but there are still plenty of people who are drawn to Biden’s supposedly grandfatherly demeanor and his “Good ole, Joe, from Scranton” persona.

Strike Three -- which should be the one that totally disqualifies Biden from consideration -- is his extremist attitude toward the COVID virus and his promise to continue the shutdown with its inevitable disastrous economic consequences and the emotional/mental health toll it is taking on the nation’s citizens.

We’ve seen the economy bounce back from the partial reopening of businesses and greater mobility for the vast majority of citizens who are not especially vulnerable to the COVID virus. We’ve learned how to deal with the virus and those who needs extra precautions.  We’ve increased our testing capacity and have achieved widespread distribution of needed equipment and medicines thanks to the Trump administration effectively working to mobilize private industry. Although there are still questions about where and how people get the virus, we now know a lot more about how best to treat it. The Trump protocols have worked; now, the number of people who recover far exceeds the number of people who die from it. Dr. Ben Carson has cited research showing about 98% of people who get the virus recover from it and the survival rate of those under 50 exceeds 99%.

As a nation, we’ve seen the hypocrisy of the left supporting supposedly “peaceful protests” that became riots under the instigation of Antifa and BLM extremists while the left ignored the thousands of people who lost their livelihoods and saw their lifetime of work utterly destroyed in hours. We’ve seen those same leftists declare Trump rallies to be dangerous COVID spreaders and church services forbidden because of the COVID threat. We’ve seen those championing constant face-mask-wearing go their way without masks while telling the masses that masks are necessary. We’ve seen depression, prescription opioid overdoses, and suicide rates go up, and counsellors tell us about the problems they are seeing from people being isolated and alone for months on end. 

Biden’s promise to shut down society again is a reckless approach. His talk about a “dark winter” is a pessimistic attitude that is not worthy of the leader of a great nation.  Obviously, we are going to be dealing with this virus long term. Do we learn how to live with it or do we hide from it and shut everything down for the foreseeable future?  Most Americans want to return to normalcy as soon as possible and rebuild our nation, increasing that positive economic bounce to a long-term trend back toward peace and prosperity. 

I believe Americans are going to vote to re-elect Donald Trump and trust him to lead us back to a renewal of our freedom and pre-COVID prosperity. Joe Biden, you’ve had your three strikes and I say you’re out. Head for the showers to scrub off the effects of your radical far-left game plan.

Image: Pxfuel