Former Vice President Joe Biden’s descent has been dramatic, despite what Fox New host Tucker Carlson describes as the effort by party insiders to establish Biden as the unstoppable front-runner. “Way back in the spring, they decided that this election would amount to an Obama restoration,” Carlson writes. “By beating President Trump we could all return to the world before Trump. Joe Biden was the designated leader of this kind of revolution.”

It should have been apparent Biden was not up to the task.

During the first Democrat presidential debate, Biden anemically responded to Kamala Harris’s attack on his record on busing and civil rights. During the second debate, Biden was surprised when other candidates began knocking Barack Obama’s immigration policies in an effort to criticize Biden himself. At the third debate, Biden was more combative but, as NBC News noted, he still “fumbled on a question about race” and “offered up word salad on some answers.” After the fourth debate, CNN labeled Biden one of the night’s losers. At the fifth debate, when discussing violence against women, Biden insisted it’s necessary to “keep punching at it and punching at it and punching at it.” At the sixth debate Biden had a fairly good night, but only a season-low six million viewers saw it. At the seventh and final debate before the Iowa causes, Newsweek’s Tara Francis Chan described Biden’s performance as “lackluster,” but insisted that “so far his stumbling debate performances haven’t hurt him, and that seems to still be the case.”

Not quite. While the Iowa caucuses demonstrated the Democrat Party’s ineptitude, there was no disputing that Biden finished fourth behind Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

The result precipitated a shakeup in Biden’s staff, yet it didn’t seem to matter. At the eighth presidential debate, prior to the New Hampshire primary, CNN’s Chris Cillizza yet again labeled Biden as one of the night’s losers. “Unlike Sanders and Buttigieg, the former vice president needed something in this debate to change his trajectory,” Cillizza wrote. “I’m not sure he got it.”

Biden himself saw the handwriting on the wall, acknowledging that he’d “probably take a hit” in the New Hampshire primary. On Tuesday morning, he canceled plans to remain in the state for the outcome, where polling had him sitting in fifth place. Even more ominously, Quinnipiac University poll released Monday revealed that Sanders had overtaken Biden as the front-running candidate nationally.

The polls were right. Biden finished fifth with only 8.4% of the vote. Perhaps even worse, no one was remotely surprised.

Yet why should they be? Biden’s debate track record is only part of the story. He is also a man prone to “gaffes,” as the media refer to his plethora of outlandish and otherworldly sounding statements. And Biden didn’t disappoint going into New Hampshire. Last Sunday, he referred to a student who questioned his anemic finish in Iowa as a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” when she insisted she had attended a caucus. Biden had previously (and erroneously) attributed the phrase to an unnamed John Wayne movie — as in a reference likely to reinforce the idea that he has been around too long and is too old for the job.

Biden further cemented that image on the same day when he insisted on a “rational policy” regarding guns means you “cannot have 20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon.” In a rather astonishing followup, Biden also asserted that “if you’re going to take on the government, you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles,” because there is “no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you if you’re worried about the government knocking down your door.”

Monday proved no better. Appearing on “CBS This Morning,” Biden hammered President Trump and his “thug” lawyer Rudy Giuliani for suggesting his son Hunter did anything wrong with regard to Ukraine. Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to Biden that it was the impeachment of Trump that brought Hunter front and center, along with a 2018 videotape of Biden himself bragging about how he got a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Hunter fired by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loans.

Biden has also expressed hostility on the campaign trail, telling people to “vote for someone else” — including Trump — if they disagreed with any of his policies. He called an Iowan voter who wondered about his age and his son “a damn liar” and challenged him to a pushup contest. He also dismissed an 18-year-old activist who asked about his super PAC donations, saying, “Look at my record, child.”

Biden’s record? In 1988, Biden was forced to drop out of the presidential race when he was caught plagiarizing at law school in Syracuse and stealing excerpts of speeches made by JFK and others. In 1994, Biden helped orchestrate the attempted takedown of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, with unsubstantiated testimony from Anita Hill. Biden also initially supported the war in Iraq and the 1994 crime bill now regarded as a disastrous piece of legislation that incarcerated far too many Americans. He voted to overturn Glass-Steagall, a law whose repeal substantially abetted the 2008 financial meltdown. Biden also championed the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that would have threatened America’s sovereignty and security.

Yet in the end it comes down to the one thing Democrats can no longer hide: Biden’s increasingly age-related debilitation. “Every off-script moment of Biden’s now is a loud cry for help,” writes columnist Stephen Kruiser. “Put the man out of our collective misery and run him out of this primary race ahead of schedule.”

Underscoring that reality was Biden’s statement following his loss: “Iowa and Nevada have spoken.”

Moreover, one of the few reasons party insiders had to support Biden — his supposed support among black Americans that topped all the other candidates — is no longer a reality: A nationwide Quinnipiac poll on Monday revealed a devastating decline in that support, from 49% to 27% in the space of just two weeks.

So who’s the party insider heir apparent? The media are ecstatic about a “surging” Amy Klobuchar — and her third-place finish in New Hampshire.

Biden’s collapse? Not exactly new news. “Biden has run for president three times,” Intelligencer columnist Jonathan Chait reminds us. “He has not yet managed to finish higher than fourth in any primary or caucus.” In fact, he’s yet to win a single delegate.

Yet maybe this time, party insiders and their Deep State allies had a different agenda. “I contend that Impeachment 2.0 was contingent upon Joe Biden running for office,” states a column posted at The Conservative Tree House. “Why? Because without Biden as a ‘candidate’ the entire premise of the impeachment narrative: ‘President Donald Trump investigating his political opponent’, doesn’t exist.”

Barring a miracle, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign will also cease to exist.