Barring infirmity, Joe Biden is likely to serve out his four-year term. For political reasons, despite the manifest failure of his presidency and his party’s terror of what lies ahead, he has a winning hand.

Sure, the country is in one heckuva pickle right now. Everyone will agree to that. There is not one single aspect of daily life in America that is better under “President” Biden than it was under President Trump. In every meaningful, measurable, tangible way, the quality of life in this country has deteriorated precipitously.

Consider:

Inflation is out of control, we’ve gone from energy independent to begging OPEC for oil, crime is running rampant, the country is up in arms over the arbitrary un-Constitutional mask and vaccine mandates, the Afghanistan exit was a tragic debacle (and Americans are still trapped there, in spite of the liberal media trying to cover that up), illegal immigration is actually being welcomed by the administration in order to change the country’s voting demographics and scores of container ships are unable to offload in California, so store shelves are becoming empty.

The perspective can be reversed, and the question could be asked, “What about daily life is better under the Democrats’ leadership? The answer, of course, is nothing, except that liberals now enjoy the absence of straight-talking, humiliating-to-progressives “mean tweets.” With Biden in office, Jim Acosta doesn’t get embarrassed every day by President Trump and Kayleigh McEnany. That’s about the best that Progressives can say for the current administration.

The Democrats have been able to reverse almost all of President Trump’s economic and immigration policies. Although those reversals have markedly worsened the quality of life in this country, they’ve gladdened the hearts of well-off unaffected progressives, the ones who have the luxury of cheering hypothetical policy changes, secure in the knowledge that no negative effects will ever enter their comfortable personal sphere.

One common train of thought goes this way: The Democrats will allow old, diminished Joe to stay in office only until the progressives have foisted as many ruinous policies on the country as they realistically can. Then after a year or so, Joe will go, making way for President Harris, which is a two-fer for the Democrats: It gives them the ability to deal with any public backlash against their mandates by blaming them in absentia on the mentally compromised #46 and it gives them bragging rights about being the party that has the first woman president.

Like many common trains of thought, the betting here is that this is wrong. Firstly, no one in the progressive camp accurately and clearly saw what an unmitigated disaster Kamala Harris would be as vice president. There are hardly adequate words to describe her. Vapid, unintellectual, shallow, vacuous, inappropriate, cackling, ignorant, uninformed, clichéd, unimaginative, lazy… the list is endless. Has there ever been a Vice President so blatantly unqualified to step into the presidency as Harris? In a word, no.

To their credit, many progressives are coming to this inescapable conclusion as well. It may not be widely discussed in public (progressives never admit error or defeat on the public stage—they play the game well), but there is an undeniable undercurrent of thought that Biden must be propped up—Weekend at Bernie’s style—for the full 4-year term. Harris must not be allowed to assume the presidency, even for a brief time. Her presence in the top spot would be a disaster; it would reveal to the voters such utter incompetence and misguided rulings and policies, that the Democrats' brand would be stained beyond all reclamation for at least two or three election cycles to come.

With the awful events like 7% inflation, $4.00-5.00 gasoline, CRT and mask mandates ruling the day in public schools, rising crime, and China calling the international shots, with all that and more still bitter and fresh in voters’ minds, Harris’ inextricably close ties to the Biden administration make her total political poison. Absolutely unelectable. Swing voters will not forget that Biden/Harris caused all the chaos and wrecked life in this country through their intentional acts. None of this just “happened to us” by bad luck from uncontrollable outside factors. It’s not as if, for example, Iran attacked Israel, causing world oil prices to spike, outside of U.S. control. Instead, the Biden administration purposely enacted every single causal policy. This was an unending string of unforced errors, born of astonishing incompetence and political deference to the Wokist wing.

Therefore, the new thinking among many progressive operatives, justifiably nervous about their rapidly dwindling prospects in 2024, is this: Keep Biden as the figurehead president for the full term. Don’t let Harris anywhere near the Oval Office.

In 2024, concoct some face-saving, reasonably plausible excuse as to why V.P. Harris is not going to be the Party’s nominee. A health issue, a family matter, whatever. Then start fresh with the candidates they feel will be the strongest to run against the Republicans. To counter the inevitable criticism of Biden/Harris, the new Progressive candidate can say that while agreeing with the general philosophies of inclusion, equity, government-paid benefits, there’s disagreement on the manner in which many of the policies were implemented.  We’ll do it differently and better. If anything is horribly unpopular and proves to be totally disastrous, simply blame it on Joe. Stacy Abrams, Gavin Newsom, whoever, will have a far better chance with no direct ties to Biden or Harris.

So unless Joe stumbles to the point that he can’t even read a teleprompter, the smart money is on him going the full 4-year distance.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0 license

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.