The Patriot Post® · Biden's High-Water Mark?

Is it all downhill from here for Joe Biden? There’s certainly an argument to be made that all the Leftmedia’s fawning over Biden’s VP choice of Kamala Harris may be the high-water mark of his campaign. One thing’s for certain: Running for president won’t get any easier for Biden. While he may be seemingly sitting pretty with a comfortable lead over President Donald Trump in the latest polls, he need look no further than Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to know that such a lead today doesn’t count for a hill of beans come Election Day. As pollster Nate Silver tellingly observed, Biden’s chance of winning currently matches that of Clinton at the same time four years ago.

Going forward, the greatest challenge for Biden may be figuring out ways to keep himself hunkered down in his basement without looking like he’s hiding from the American public. His most daunting hurdle will be facing off against Trump on a national debate stage where the state of his declining cognitive acuity risks further exposure. It will be interesting to see if Biden, a notorious gaffe machine for decades, manages to pass off any mental miscues as simply part of his everyman charm.

However, even if Biden is able to successfully avoid the limelight while banking on a groundswell of hatred against Trump to hand him victory, his comfort may not last the year. The reality of a struggling economy coupled with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic are issues for which his campaign had no serious solutions beyond what Trump had already done. As political analyst Jim Geraghty notes, “The downside of trying to make the presidential election a referendum on the incumbent is that the electorate offers a mandate that amounts mostly to ‘don’t be Donald Trump,’ not necessarily to a particular course of action or policy.”

This factor could be Biden’s undoing. As hated as Trump is by the Left, no one in modern history has ever successfully ousted a sitting president simply by using the argument, “I’m not the incumbent.” Trump’s advantage is his impressive record of accomplishments in just over three and a half years. Biden’s nearly 50-year record in Washington pales in comparison. Socialism is the only policy proposal Biden is offering — in other words, a recipe for disaster.

Biden should enjoy it while he can, well, remember it.