Yes, he’s really, really old, thus removing the opportunity to attack President Trump on the basis of his age.

And yes, he says really stupid stuff -- and they are usually incorrectly called “gaffes,” which Michael Kinsley correctly defined as a politician accidentally telling the truth. Biden’s mouth just runs faster than his brain (not much of a feat) and he utters nonsense. Often, mean-spirited nonsense  like “They’ll put y’all back in chains.”

But the real reason why Biden won’t get the nomination is that he and his family are corrupt, enriching themselves courtesy of foreign governments. Normally, that would not be a problem for a Democrat because the dominant mainstream media is not interested in scandals affecting powerful Democrats. But with 22 Democrats running for president, some of them with MSM allies, and with grave doubts about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump (their overriding goal), these scandals will not be suppressed. Especially because they involve collusion with a foreign power.

Vanity Fair and the New York Times, which are nobody’s idea of right wing publications, are onto the story of Biden helping his son make a huge fortune via deals with China. Breitbart summarizes:

A $1.5 billion sweetheart deal Hunter Biden’s private equity firm secured from the state-owned Bank of China is “looming on the horizon” as a potential line of attack against his father’s 2020 presidential campaign, according to Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen.

This comes days after a New York Times article renewed interest in the revelations exposed in Peter Schweizer’s 2018 bestseller Secret Empires concerning the sweetheart deals Hunter Biden’s private equity firm secured while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.

But the Times’ article “may be just the first volley in what is likely to become a broader war over Joe Biden’s conduct and record,” Vanity Fair’s Nguyen writes:

Past speculation about Biden family drama has centered on Hunter’s documented struggle with drug use and his recently ended relationship with his late brother’s widow. But the bigger threat might actually be Hunter’s past business enterprises. Already, there’s another attack line looming on the horizon: in his latest book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Breitbart editor-at-large Peter Schweizer describes how a private-equity firm managed by Hunter Biden, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, negotiated a $1.5 billion investment deal with the state-owned Bank of China at the same time that his father, then the vice president, was conducting high-level diplomacy with Beijing. (On one of his trips, Hunter allegedly made use of Air Force Two.) Whether or not the Chinese hoped to curry favor with Hunter’s father, Trump allies are sure to make note of the issue, especially given Joe Biden’s controversial remark this week downplaying China as an economic competitor. (A spokesman for Hunter Biden disputed Schweizer’s claims to the Journal.)

In a March interview with Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham, Peter Schweizer explained the troubling circumstances surrounding Hunter Biden’s lucrative deal with the Chinese government at a time when his father was negotiating U.S. policy with the regime.

“In December of 2013, Hunter Biden flies on Air Force 2 to Beijing, China, with his father,” Schweizer said. “His father meets with Chinese officials, he’s very soft on Beijing. The most important thing that happens [is] 10 days after they return. And that’s when Hunter Biden’s small, private equity firm called Rosemont Seneca Partners gets a $1 billion private equity deal with the Chinese government, not with the Chinese corporation, with the government. And what people need to realize is Hunter Biden has no background in China. He has no background in private equity. The deal he got in the Shanghai free-trade zone, nobody else had — Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Blackstone, nobody had this deal.”

“There’s no question when you chart what Joe Biden is doing with China — the meetings he’s having and the deals that his son is procuring at the same time — that they are buying off Biden through his son. I think it’s crystal clear,” Schweizer added.

Biden is already having trouble with his comments minimizing China's threat as a competitor, which is news to many workers at factories that closed when production was moved to China. Many of these factories are in Midwestern states Trump won, where Biden supposedly can better the electoral results of Hillary Clinton.

"China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.... They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west.”
 

Then there is the matter of the Biden clan’s dealing with Ukraine, as Jeff Carlson explains in The Epoch Times:
As Ukraine underwent dramatic changes in 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden played a critical role in the Obama administration’s involvement in the revolution that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Following the revolution, Biden would use his influence to help force the creation of the troubled National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Notably, during the 2016 election campaign, information leaked from NABU about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that helped to create the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.

Biden also would use the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to pressure Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor general. At the time, the prosecutor had been investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas giant that had appointed Biden’s son, Hunter, as a board member.

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently said, “Keep your eye on Ukraine.” In his comments to the Washington Examiner, Giuliani highlighted the “plot to create an investigation of President Trump, based on a false charge of conspiracy with the Russians to affect the 2016 elections.”

Both scandals are grave and complicated. But there is a year and a half ahead in which they can be excavated and explained. Media-connected rival Democrats are going to make sure that both scandals are explored.

Biden is the 2016 Jeb! of the Democrats’ 2020 field. He looks like a shoo-in to many, but he will fade.

Of course as my favorite Yogi, Yogi Berra, warned us, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But I will be very surprised if Biden is the Dems’ nominee.

Photo credit: Ancho