Since before the November 2020 event masquerading as an election, conservative pundits have been theorizing that mentally deficient and rapidly declining Joe Biden is merely a placeholder for the eventual rise to power of Kamala Harris, the shrill Hillary Clinton wannabe who accrued political power on her back and was so unlikable that she was forced to drop out of the Democrat party primaries two months before the Iowa caucuses without garnering a single delegate.

The most popular theory is that the powers that be chose Biden as a safe, likable candidate as a contrast to the larger-than-life bombastic personality of President Donald J. Trump, hoping to ease Biden across the finish line by hook or by crook as an easily controlled puppet.  Kamala, so the thinking goes, was the designated minority who filled an intersectionality checkbox of being black (more or less) and female (if we can still say that).

Now that the Biden/Harris regime has been installed, the left has only to wait a decent, or indecent, amount of time for Ole Joe's decline to become too obvious to cover up, then gently ease him out the door by inducing him to resign or using the 25th Amendment if he refuses to do so or can't understand what they're asking him to do.  At that point, Kamala can be installed in his place, and the self-indulgent party can continue without letup or hindrance.  Some pundits differ on the amount of time the left will wait before putting Biden out to pasture.  I've heard everything from a few months to two years, the only constant being its inevitability.

There's a certain amount of logic to it.  Like Biden, Kamala never met a standard she could keep or a moral she agreed with for anything other than cynical, self-aggrandizing motives.  She wouldn't recognize the commandment against lying if it bit her in the fundament, and she is (with apologies to Fedex) absolutely, positively a godless communist who hates America and everything that's good and decent in the world.  Admittedly, Sleepy Joe may not be an out-and-out communist, but as a good socialist, he's right next door to communism, making him and Kamala two peas in a pod.  They agree on 99.9% of everything, differing mainly on how fast their left-wing policies should be implemented.  The only noticeable difference between them is that Kamala can string together a dozen or more sentences without losing her place, forgetting important names and dates, or sucking on someone's fingers.

I've got a slightly different theory, one more in line with the internal workings of leftists.  As the designated vice president, Kamala Harris currently enjoys the best of both worlds; behind the scenes, she exercises all the powers of the presidency without having to publicly carry any responsibility for the results.  If any of Biden's policies backfires in the real world and has to be changed or removed, she can do it when she ascends to the Oval Office with the "plausible deniability" that Grandpa Gropes was responsible for the debacle, not she.  I put the phrase "plausible deniability" in quotes because the only people who'll believe it, or pretend to, will be the very people on the inside who know it's bogus to begin with.  The longer Biden stands point at the tip of the spear, the longer she can enjoy being the power behind the throne without any of the dangers of being out front.

There may be, and probably is, a great deal of tension and jockeying for power behind the scenes between her and "Doctor" Jill, but Kamala has the trump card of the Constitution to pull out, which denies Jill any real power.  The fact that neither of them gives a rip about the Constitution or that Joe and Kamala are in power in violation of the Constitution is entirely beside the point.  Remember: leftists freely adopt and discard standards, such as the Constitution, based solely on their momentary utility.

Jill is every bit the leftist Kamala is and understands leftists' innate flexibility on standards.  She also knows that the only way she can fight Kamala's use of the Constitution is to expose Kamala's shredding of it on the way to the White House.  They both know she won't do it because it would endanger their power, which leaves Kamala in the catbird seat.  The observable fact that both of them attend nearly every public appearance Biden makes is a testament to this behind-the-scenes maneuvering and armistice.  Kamala can "graciously" leave Jill in the position of first lady, with all the attendant trappings and privileges, while she rules the roost from the shadows.  The longer they can prop up Ole Joe, the longer their little arrangement can endure: Jill enjoying being first lady and Kamala exercising the powers of office while fobbing off the responsibility on a doddering old man who should have been sent to a nursing home instead of the White House.

The flip-side of the coin is a bit more iffy, especially for "Doctor" Jill.  When Joe finally succumbs to his advancing dementia and Kamala takes his place in the Oval Office, Jill will have to leave the White House with him.  At that point, she becomes a liability for Kamala.  Regardless of how obvious Joe's mental problems are and how pressing the need to remove him from power, she'll be embittered at losing her position at the center of the universe.  "Former first lady" doesn't have the same ring to it, not to mention power and lifestyle.  If she feels slighted by Kamala (a near certainty), she could decide to bring down the whole house of cards by going public with what she knows about how the election was stolen.  Ultimately, leftists have no loyalty to anyone but themselves, and unless Kamala meets every one of Jill's demands for leaving the White House, she could easily turn vindictive.

Leftists know this about each other, which is why there were so many purges in the Kremlin.  Since leftists understand each other, it's in Jill's best interest (and personal safety) to keep Sleepy Joe propped up for as long as humanly possible and perhaps even beyond, while Kamala plays puppetmaster from the shadows.

I predict that Biden will be kept around, playing hide-and-seek with his mental faculties in the Oval Office, a lot longer than the pundits expect.

Michael V. Wilson is an author, freelance writer, curmudgeon, and husband who writes for the joy of it at Scribe of Texas.

Image: Mobilus In Mobili via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.