Joe Biden’s presidential run is pathetic because it’s easy to see that his mind is giving out on him, something the majority of voters recognize. Biden’s presidential run is also scary because the hard leftists who surround him are using him as a Trojan Horse to advance their destructive socialist policies.

It’s these puppet masters who have pushed the formerly middle(ish)-of-the-road (and invariably wrong) politician to make extremist promises. Most people tend to ignore or downplay Biden’s more radical statements, seeing them as the kind of thing politicians say during campaigns. One has to ask, though, whether we can afford to ignore Biden’s promise to use his executive office to shut down the entire country again should scientists recommend it.

During the Democrat presidential primaries, after the no-hopers dropped out, the remaining presidential candidates ran the gamut from left to communist, with most closer to the communist end. Biden claimed to be the moderate candidate in the race, and that’s how the Democrats are trying to sell him to the general public. After all, Joe’s been around since 1972, and he’s always been a Democrat stalwart, unlike Bernie Sanders, who’s also been around forever, but as a communist stalwart.

Nevertheless, throughout the campaign, even while claiming to be a moderate, Biden has signed on to every radical idea that the Democrat party has moved into the Overton window. He’s gone so far left that even Bernie approves:

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Joe Biden told him that he believes he can become the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“The reason I say that I think Biden has a chance to be the most progressive president since FDR is that is exactly what Joe Biden said to me,” Sanders, a former presidential candidate, said in an interview Wednesday on PBS’ “Amanpour & Company.”

“He understands the severity of this moment,” said Sanders.

To that end, Biden’s campaign has adopted most of Sanders’s principles or scooched as close to them as possible. Given a compliant Congress, Biden says that he would reinstate the public option of Obamacare, aim for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (so we can all look like California), pay for college for families earning $125,000 or less per year, go in big for racial (in)justice, and, grant mass amnesty to illegal aliens along with opening the borders. Democrats appear willing to stomach all of these proposals.

The big question, though, is whether Democrats can tolerate Biden’s most recent commitment. He insists that, if the Wuhan virus doesn’t retreat and “the scientists” say so, he’ll use his executive power to lock down the entire country all over again:

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he would close the United States down over the spread of the new virus from China if health experts recommended to do so.

“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” Biden, a former vice president, said in an interview with ABC News.

“I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving, until we control the virus,” Biden added. “That is the fundamental flaw of this administration’s thinking to begin with. In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus.”

That is an insane promise. It ignores the fact that the virus has barely touched many states, while it raked through several poorly managed (and densely populated) Democrat-run states. It also pretends that there are no trade-offs for holding the virus at bay. People in Democrat states have watched their economies collapse; businesses close; people die from depression, suicide, substance abuse, and untreated diseases; their young people stop learning; their restaurants close; and their cities empty of businesses and high earners (aka, the entire tax base).

While leftists have been good little soldiers for the first round of shutdowns, aided in part by their extreme lack of perspective about the risks associated with the Wuhan virus, will they really be willing to become prisoners in their own homes once again? Will they be willing to see their economies get destroyed so badly that they can never recover? Will they accept all the unnecessary deaths that flow from preventing virus deaths?

I want to answer those rhetorical questions by saying, “I don’t think so.” Sadly, the left is so maddened by Trump Derangement Syndrome, the best that I can say is, “I hope not.” What I really hope to see happen is normal people vote in overwhelming numbers for Trump on November 3. If that happens, the leftists and those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome slink back into the shadows where they belong.

Image: Joe Biden, altered VOA American video screenshot (public domain)