If Joe Biden secures the Democratic nomination in the upcoming presidential race, how long will it be until we see the 77-year-old (in 2020) being thrown into an SUV like a side of beef after passing out?  Or coughing uncontrollably during a stump speech?  Or staring into space at a campaign appearance?

We've already seen Biden pull out of a major speech last August due to an undisclosed illness.  Can he withstand the grueling pace of a primary campaign, not to mention a presidential run against a man who continues to schedule rallies where tens of thousands of excited fans line up to hear his MAGA speeches?  President Trump is only a few years younger than Biden, but his legendary stamina during the 2015–2016 campaign season made some younger Republican candidates look like low-energy slackers.  Already, in his first rollout speech in Pittsburgh last Monday, Biden slurred and stumbled over and mispronounced words.  It's 2016 all over again.

Biden has a long way to go until the election, and already his staff is running interference with the media.  Apparently, people do not want anyone to get close enough to the former vice president to ask any hard questions.  According to the Washington Examiner, a freelance journalist complained via Twitter that several reporters and photographers were physically blocked by Biden's people from taking pictures or getting a comment from the candidate at his Des Moines rally.  Similarly, in 2016, Clinton's campaign aides kept their boss away from reporters by corralling the press behind a rope.  As Hillary walked along a Fourth of July parade route in New Hampshire, members of the press sidled along the barrier, out of earshot of any conversation between Clinton and her supporters

Strategically, distancing reporters from scandal-ridden candidates with health problems is a no-brainer.  During her run for president, Clinton could hardly get through a speech without keeling over, much less answer for the whereabouts of 30,000 deleted emails or for her role in the murders of four Americans, including an ambassador, in Benghazi.

Like Hillary, Biden may not be mentally capable of fielding inquiries from independent journalists about his son's dealings with a Ukrainian energy company under investigations, or the various complaints by several women of inappropriate touching, kissing, and hair-smelling, or the YouTube videos showing him feeling up little girls.  His recent mockery of China as a geopolitical competitor in his folksy "China is going to eat our lunch, come on man"–style babble left even his fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders stunned.  Couple all  this with the never-ending campaigning from one state to the next, and it's enough to raise even a 30-year-old's blood pressure.

Hillary Clinton found out the hard way how difficult it is to run a race in poor health.  At the age of 65, she was hospitalized for a blood clot on the brain.  In 2016, at the age of 69, it was obvious to most observers that this serious condition had taken its toll.  Biden has had two brain surgeries in the past for cranial aneurysms.  Although his prodigious gaffes over the years have been largely laughed off by the mainstream media as an endearing feature of "Uncle Joe's" quirky personality, Democrats could be in for an embarrassing repeat of 2016 if he becomes the party's nominee.

Image credit: YouTube screen grab.