At times like these, I sure am glad I'm not a Democrat.  While several aspiring Republican notables are throwing their hats into the ring, the Democrats' standard-bearer is collapsing in the polls.  Having another full term of eligibility, Mr. Biden eschews turning himself into a lame duck and continues to cling to the prospect of his re-election.  Meanwhile, our rudderless nation is drifting onto the rocks of an unpleasant destiny.

All along, Biden's age-related feebleness has cast doubt about his functional abilities.  This has only gotten worse with time.  But now the FBI and the lapdog media are backing away from shielding him from a looming influence-peddling scandal.  And yet, the more marketable Democrat presidential aspirants are holding back...just so they won't appear disrespectful of our current president.  They're also not exactly star quality material when compared to the Republican field.

One of the great political miracles of all time was the survival of the Democrats in the aftermath of the Civil War.  Prior to Lincoln, Republicans were, at best, a third party.  The first president after Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, was a Union-Democrat.  It wasn't until Grover Cleveland defeated James G. Blaine in the election of 1884 that the Democrats managed to once again win a national contest.  In many ways, Cleveland was to the right of Ronald Reagan and barely squeaked by in the popular vote — 48.9 to 48.3 percent.

The Democrats' lurch to the left, which became all the more obvious during the Obama years, is alienating many formerly loyal members of the electorate.  It has long been my expectation that the stalwart Progressive Democrats will eventually morph into full-blown Greens — radical leftist tree-huggers, ironically trapped in our dystopic urban cores.  The rest of us will either be right-of-center or just plain centrists. 

An empirical example of the nausea being induced by today's woke-left agenda would have to be the near-instantaneous collapse of the Bud Light brand — following its overt embrace of abnormal sexuality.  Democrats and their media allies try to stereotype conservatives as hateful bigots.  However, we typically cut our neighbors an enormous amount of slack when it comes to their private lives.  We just don't like having weird stuff shoved into our faces or our children's minds.

And Joe Biden is still at the top of the ticket.

I really have no idea as to what's going to happen.  I suspect that Biden will be moved out of the target area.  There may be a concerted effort to make this as pleasant as possible...but how?

This may be the inevitable result of a dishonest "news" media establishment that is constantly pushing fiction.  A real-world example of this occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Pravda never published news that could be harmful to the regime.  Should there be a serious plane crash, it was never mentioned — folks just went away and never came back.  After the state stopped rigidly controlling the news, the Russian people were astonished to hear about all kinds of tragedies.  The world was a much more dangerous place than they were led to believe.

Meanwhile, perception of Biden's cognitive (ahem) difficulties is being coincidentally enhanced by the sad story of 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein and her exceptionally obnoxious Senate colleague John Fetterman.  Having such dysfunctional beings in positions of real power violates the most basic requirements of even a modest meritocracy...let alone the assumed benefits of truly competitive electoral politics.

Going deeper into this mess, the Republicans are not guaranteed a historically significant success next year.  It may still happen, since the Dems have 23 Senate seats up for grabs versus only 10 for the GOP.  My worry is over primary campaign cannibalism — the devouring of opponents.  Not to worry too much.  Trump and DeSantis may be trading barbs along with corrupt media enhancement...but nothing really serious.  Thus far.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.