Has there ever been a worse time to be a Democrat?

Seriously. Name a time when the word “Democrat” was such an essential part of so much bad news. You’re the party in power, but just barely, and the leader of your party is a dementing bumbler and an international embarrassment with three excruciating years left in his term. Further, his more youthful Jamaican-Indian female vice president, who might normally be seen as the party’s salvation, is both the least popular veep in history and also, as Newt Gingrich points out, the dumbest. And finally, there’s the president’s son, whose seemingly supernatural addictions to sex, drugs, and dirty money have defied even the notoriously corrupt mainstream media’s ability to bury them.

And beyond all this, the world is on fire, our enemies are emboldened, inflation is rampant, our economy is tottering, our supply chains are bollixed, our southern border is wide open, our military is demoralized, our schools have never been worse, our media has never been more corrupt, and a career in crime has never seemed more attractive. And all of this is the fault of Democrats.

November will be here before we know it, and with it, we believe, a near-biblical smiting for the aforementioned party. But until then, we might ponder: How much longer will the Left keep covering for Hunter Biden?

We got a sense last week that a defenestration might be in the offing. Oh, sure, it came deep down in the 24th paragraph of a New York Times article about Junior’s legal troubles — an article that, as our Nate Jackson noted, was about 17 months late to the party. What an embarrassment for The Paper of Record to have intentionally avoided a story about a famously abandoned laptop computer and the deeply consequential and profoundly incriminating evidence therein. Might the Gray Lady be looking for a way to finally make amends?

The White House has heretofore avoided its Hunter problem by assiduously dodging the (precious few) tough questions. And, as the New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes, the dodging continues: “President Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, refused to answer The Post’s White House reporter, Steven Nelson, when he had the rare opportunity to ask her two of those questions last week. Psaki’s excuse was that Hunter Biden ‘doesn’t work in the government.’” Here’s that exchange:

.@NYPost’s @StevenNelson10: “The New York Times reported this week that the First Son [Hunter Biden] remains under criminal investigation. Does the president still intend to stay out of that case?”

Psaki: “Yes. It’s Department of Justice and I would point you to them.” pic.twitter.com/roMxMjmCqf

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 18, 2022

We wonder: Will Psaki’s line of defense hold? Because it seems awfully weak. It might, though, especially if she decides to never again call on Steven Nelson.

Either way, the scribes at the Post will continue to savage the lapdogs at the Times. “In the heat of the presidential race of 2020,” the Post’s editorial board wrote last week, “the Times never missed a chance to cast doubt on the laptop, saying the information was ‘purported’ and quoting a letter from former Democratic officials who claimed — with no evidence — that it was Russian disinformation. As recently as September 2021, the Times called the laptop ‘unsubstantiated’ in a news story.”

And just yesterday, in her back-and-forth with fellow Times columnist Bret Stephens, Gail Collins wrote this with what we’re told was a straight face: “I’m so glad our colleagues are still doing strong reporting on this story — Hunter Biden’s scummy business dealings shouldn’t be swept under the rug any more than anyone else’s.”

Ah, yes. Nothing says “strong reporting” like 17 months of stonewalling.

As for the White House, its ice floe is getting smaller and smaller. As columnist Cabot Phillips writes: “They’re under growing pressure because for the last year and a half, they’ve mostly refused to talk about it, and when they have talked about it, they’ve mostly brushed it off as fake news or even Russian disinformation. Biden campaign advisor Simone Sanders for example, said anyone who shared the story was promoting ‘Russian misinformation’ while White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki implied the same on her Twitter account. President Biden himself even called the story ‘a bunch of garbage.’”

Even Donald Trump’s estranged former attorney general, Bill Barr, has weighed in, noting that Biden “lied to the American people” about it during one of the 2020 presidential debates. “He’s squarely confronted with the laptop, and he suggested that it was Russian disinformation and pointed to the letter written by some intelligence people that was baseless — which he knew was a lie. And I was shocked by that.”

“Shocked”? Frankly, we’re shocked he’s shocked. Somehow, for decades, Joe Biden has largely gotten away with lying about himself and his family. That’s what’s shocking.

UPDATE: Columnist Margot Cleveland has pulled together eight distinct scandals whose documentary evidence can be found within that porn-filled MacBook, if only a single intrepid federal investigator had the guts to look. Influence peddling in Ukraine and China, corrupt dealings with Bursima, clear conflicts of interest, possible collusion to rig the 2020 election — it’s all there, just waiting to be explored, just waiting for the Republicans to retake Congress and regain that subpoena power.