It’s panic time for Democrats. So much so that George Clooney is blaming Donald Trump for Joe Biden’s remarkably stubborn unpopularity.

Clooney, a seemingly likable guy who many years ago made some good movies, took politics past the water’s edge during a BBC interview on Sunday in which he complained about the bad hand left by Trump to Biden. “It’s like taking a battered child and thinking everything’s going to be OK his first day in school,” said the actor. “There’s a lot of things that have to be repaired, you know? There’s a lot of healing that has to happen, and it’s going to take time.”

Setting aside Clooney’s odious comparison of our nation under Trump to a battered child, what’s interesting is that it’s taken him nine months to figure out what a diabolical trap The Orange Man set for his party’s standard-bearer. It was a multifaceted trap, to be sure, and its various hazards included a roaring economy, growing wages, record-low unemployment rates, insignificant inflation, three COVID-19 vaccines and a system for distributing them, a secure southern border, energy independence, low gas prices, a strong and cohesive military, the respect of our geopolitical foes, a stable Middle East, and an exit plan for Afghanistan. The only thing Trump didn’t leave Biden was a trustworthy election system.

And Biden, beginning on January 20, has veered hard to the left and steadily dismantled all of it. Damn that Trump!

As for Clooney’s belief that it’s going to take time to “repair” all the good things Trump bequeathed to Biden, we’re not so sure. After all, it took Scranton Joe nearly half a century to gain the White House, but less than nine months to wreck every good thing Trump left him. Still, the star of “Suburbicon” is convinced: Biden is sitting at 38% approval, and it’s all Trump’s fault.

The left-of-center scribes at Politico seem to think all of Biden’s troubles revolve around COVID-19. “Democrats are ringing alarm bells,” they write, “and coming to the simplest of conclusions: It’s the pandemic, stupid.” As proof, they point to a nine-person focus group of Democrat voters, all of whom gave Biden a grade of C- or worse, and all of whom gave reasons for their unease that revolve around COVID-19’s influence on the everyday parts of their lives. Onerous masking and vaccine requirements are the obvious ones, but myriad others — the inability to buy a new car because of supply chain issues, and the inability to enjoy a nice dinner out due to understaffing, for example — are ever present.

We think there’s some truth to this diagnosis, but it’s certainly not the only thing plaguing Joe Biden. Remarkably, though, the reader has to slog through 25 paragraphs of the Politico piece (you’re welcome) to see even a mention of the disaster in Afghanistan or the calamity on our southern border as reasons for Biden’s slide.

“Seek first to understand” would no doubt be the advice of self-help guru Steven Covey to Democrat strategists everywhere. Either that, or kiss goodbye your tenuous hold on power. On second thought, Democrats: Go ahead and keep blaming all of Biden’s woes on the pandemic.

Ultimately, the biggest obstacle Joe Biden faces is Joe Biden. Our Mark Alexander, who recently analyzed what went so horribly wrong in Afghanistan, came to a conclusion that’s attributable across the board: Biden himself is the red flag.

Just nine months into their guy’s presidency, the troubling truth that Democrats must now wrestle with is the inelasticity of Biden’s polling numbers. Unlike past presidents who’ve been overtaken by events, Joe just isn’t bouncing back.

He isn’t bouncing back, and his party has resorted to infighting. In a recent conference call with Democrats, Biden joked that putting Bernie Sanders in the same room as West Virginia’s fly in the Democrat ointment, Joe Manchin, could result in “homicide.”

Democrats laughed, but they know that Biden’s entire agenda is in peril.

As to Biden’s polling predicament — which is, of course, the Democrat Party’s predicament — George Clooney is resolute if nothing else. “Poll numbers come up and go down,” he says. “I would expect them to go up again.”

Go ahead and set a number, George. We’ll take the “under.”