To the extent that he can, we suspect he still thinks back to 1988 — or was it ‘87? Or '86? — and he remembers the way it was when he was still young and strong and relevant. Back when he was running for president for the first time.

Here’s how Richard Ben Cramer described the candidate in What It Takes, his magisterial work on the 1988 presidential campaign:

His days were a dance, which he could not slow down — if he let that energy slip from his grasp, then he couldn’t get it back for the next room, or the next … sure, he could fly over twenty-five buses (absolutely convinced, not a doubt in his mind …), but it had to be done at speed. So many times, in the office, in meetings, in a plane or van between events, Joe was just spinning, talking a streak, going too fast to listen. If he asked a question, he wanted the answer now. When he snapped about arrangements, Advance or staff work, it was always about delay — they were slowing him down!

What a difference 36 years makes. These days, the only person slowing Joe Biden down is Joe Biden. His days are no longer a dance, and his once-spritely stride is now a sad shuffle. With nearly four months left in his single term as president, he’s now the enfeebled canine from the Robert Frost poem. He’s the old dog who barks backward without getting up.

With little more than a month to go in the 2024 presidential campaign, Biden has been shunted aside, kicked to the curb by a new generation of Democrats. As NBC News reports, Biden “has privately complained to allies that his name and his accomplishments have virtually disappeared from the national conversation and about how quickly the party that he has served for more than five decades appears to have moved on from him.” The piece continues:

Biden has noted at times that Vice President Kamala Harris, who took his place at the top of the Democratic ticket in July, hasn’t been mentioning him in her campaign speeches lately, including when she talks about an economy he believes his policies set on a positive trajectory.

If Biden is waiting for Harris to invoke his name on the campaign trail, he might want to find a comfy recliner. Bidenonmics and Bidenflation are attack lines for the Republicans, not attributes of the Democrats. The same goes for his disastrous stewardship of international affairs, including one ruinous war in Ukraine and another one between Israel and Iran’s terrorist proxies.

Donald Trump and JD Vance have certainly made it a point to remind folks that this is the Biden-Harris administration, and that Harris has already been in office for more than three and a half years. Indeed, when Harris hears her opponents invoking Joe Biden’s name, it probably sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

But while Biden complains about being ignored, he hasn’t exactly helped his case. As Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday, “President Biden was at his beach house, and Vice President Harris was hosting political fundraisers on the West Coast. Is there a reason that they could not be here?”

It’s a great question, and The Binder’s answer was less than satisfying: “The president did exactly what a president, in this moment, needs to do, which is directing his team to take action.”

Biden’s excuse for his absenteeism was even more pathetic. Asked why he and Harris weren’t in Washington over the weekend, commanding the hurricane crisis and response from the White House, he snarled, “I was commanding it. I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well.”

Reporter: “Why weren’t you and Vice President Harris here in Washington commanding this weekend?”

Biden: “I was commanding. I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. It’s called a telephone.” pic.twitter.com/XheKZ4zhfi

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 30, 2024

Well. At least two hours.

Here, we might contrast the president’s two-hour ordeal on the phone in Rehoboth Beach with the seven-hour ordeal of 75-year-old Bruce Tipton, who clung desperately to a tree in Marshall, North Carolina, after his trailer home was washed away by raging floodwaters. Tipton, too, was ultimately washed away.

Even the efforts of private citizens are putting shame to the Biden-Harris administration. North Carolina Senator Ted Budd was too classy to point fingers, but his account last night on Sean Hannity’s show was telling:

God bless groups like Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham, his son Ed Graham, and others that are stepping up and bringing in the military discipline and the speed and the generosity … serving in the name of Jesus Christ to make things better for the people of Western North Carolina. … It’s the private citizens that are stepping up right now. I saw a group the other day, Operation Air Drop, private citizens with small airplanes, people who have spent their life savings to make the dream come true and … are risking themselves, bringing their own personal equipment here and doing rescues.

But, hey, Joe Biden was working the phones for two hours.

Remember how the Leftmedia pilloried President George W. Bush for his so-called Katrina flyover? Where’s the outrage for this current AWOL administration? Biden and Harris are certainly mindful of the bad optics, and they finally headed out yesterday to tour the wreckage.

Hurricane Helene has taken its place among the worst natural disasters in our nation’s history, with at least 191 people dead amid a path of destruction through the Southeast. But you wouldn’t have known it by the indifference of the Biden-Harris administration, with Biden on the beach and Harris hobnobbing in Hollywood.

Given Joe Biden’s condition, it’s no surprise that Harris has put him in her rearview mirror. If only the rest of us could do the same for her and Tim Walz on November 5.