Jumping Jehoshaphat!  Joe Biden is now a candidate for a third run at the presidency, though at age 76, he is no longer running on as many cylinders as he once was.

Nevertheless, Sleepy (rhymes with creepy) Joe rolled out his vision for America in front of what appeared to be a relatively anemic "crowd" of mostly union members and young, bored, diverse supporters sporting bright yellow Biden tee-shirts and cheering on cue.

The cameras never veered from the podium to determine how many folks had turned out to welcome the former veep into the insanely congested field of Democratic wannabes itching to stump Trump in 2020.  So there's no way of knowing how many were on hand for Joe Biden's long awaited, presumably game-changing announcement.  Nevertheless, newly minted candidate Biden, ever the wordsmith, expressed his shock and awe at the "crowd" by uttering the single, trenchant syllable: "Wow!"

Afterward, Joe strolled into the audience to press some flesh, a ritual with which he is only too familiar.  Not too aggressively, of course, because flesh-pressing — once a surefire arrow in this longtime politician's quiver — has backfired of late.  Joe's gaffe-a-minute mouth often landed him in trouble in the past.  Now, it seems, his nuzzling nose is doing the same.  If Biden wants to savor the sweet smell of success in his current endeavor, he'd best keep his logorrhea in check and his pointy schnozzola out of women's hair.

At a time in America when white maleness is suspect and old age is anathema, Biden's current lead in the Democrat primary comes as a surprise.  Still, the all-important liberal press is anything but enthusiastic.  Even President Obama has declined to endorse his own vice president, wisely keeping out of the fray, if for no other reason than to serve his secret hope that when the Democrat "circular firing squad" does its work, former first lady Michelle may be soul-searchingly solicited to step in , triumphant, over the dead bodies.

With or without the former chief executive's nod of approval, Joe has decided to run on what he presumes is the popularity of the Obama-Biden administration.  He is also insisting that any economic successes realized during Trump's (illegal) presidency are merely a continuation of positive policies put in place when Biden was Veep.

There are already plenty of Democrats who believe this to be true.  And there are even more jumping aboard the big bandwagon with Old Joe and others in their hatred and hysteria to remove Trump from office before it becomes necessary to run against him in the next election.  While Trump rises above the crowds at his rallies, Joe sticks to his usual aftermath, schmoozing with clusters of admirers, even cracking jokes about how he might put one of them on his ticket as his running mate.

That will, of course, never happen.  But neither have a slew of other things Joe Biden has promised in the past.  After the Benghazi butchery, he swore to a crowd that he would follow the perpetrators to the "gates of hell."  They still have not been caught.  On another occasion, he tried to convince a crowd of blacks that Trump and company "would put y'all back in chains," later adding that the GOP would also revive Jim Crow laws in the South, all the while forgetting that it was the Republicans who freed the slaves in the Civil War and the Southern Democrats who introduced the dreaded Jim Crow restrictions on minority voting rights.

Joe makes even less sense when he attempts to substitute reasoning for railing.  If Trump's manner of speaking is sometimes rambling and inelegant, Biden's is often unintelligible.  Perhaps he thinks all it takes is "Joe being Joe."

In any event, his prevailing "message" is one of contradictions.  While he purports to be running as a centrist who would embrace unity as opposed to anger, he has angrily accused Trump of "clenched fist, closed hand, and hard heart that demonize opponents and spew hatred."  Try that on as a metaphor for attracting those who voted for Trump in 2016.

And if you want to get a flavor of what a nice guy Biden really is, scout out his performance in his one and only vice presidential debate with GOP candidate Paul Ryan, during which Old Joe did little more than fidget facetiously, roll his eyes, and scoff and leer at his younger opponent.

For all his braggadocio, Sleepy Joe has not yet been able to stir the primal juices of his party.  If he can't accomplish that, he hasn't a ghost of a chance of swaying those American heartland voters who, for good reason, left Joe's party in the last election and voted for Trump.  With our president's claim of "promises made, promises kept," there seems little reason for this slice of the electorate to refuse him a second term.

Yet despite the baggage Uncle Joe Biden carries with him after a half-century of supping at the public trough, he is no slouch when it comes to narcissism, insisting that he is the most qualified person to be president of the United States.  I seem to remember Hillary Rodham Clinton making that same claim.