Joe Biden must think we’re idiots.

Or at least he must think the 81 million people who voted for him (wink, wink) are idiots. Because there he was in Philadelphia yesterday, telling the AFL-CIO how great things are and insisting that his administration “created the greatest jobs recovery in history.”

“I don’t want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending,” the reckless-spending 79-year-old yelled. “We’re changing people’s lives!”

They’re changing people’s lives, all right. For the worse.

And this is the predicament that the Democrat Party finds itself in. Their cognitively addled standard-bearer is officially the least popular first-term president in the history of presidential polling, and he’s behaving like Kevin Bacon during the riot scene in “Animal House.” All is not well, though. All is most definitely not well.

How “not well” is it for the Democrats? “If the next presidential election were held today” declared a recent Rasmussen poll, “50% would vote for Trump while 36% would vote for Biden.”

By now, the leftists at The New York Times know this, and they’re beginning to panic. Which is why a weekend article in the paper was titled, “Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise.”

Whispers?

“As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm,” whispered the Times, “Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.”

And with that, the long knives came out for Joe Biden — or at least for his announced plans to seek a second term. The Times even used that time-honored device of shivving by surrogate when it quoted an obscure Democratic National Committee member from Miami named Steve Simeonidis: “To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” he said, adding that Biden “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ‘24 right after the midterms.”

Of course, the Times would never kneecap a Democrat president like that. But some Everyman named Steve Simeonidis would.

The Times says it interviewed “nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020,” and their findings revealed what we knew to be the case even before the 2020 election: that Joe Biden is unfit for the presidency; that by any honest assessment, he simply isn’t up to the rigors of the job.

There’s trouble at the palace, too, which our Nate Jackson wrote about two weeks ago in the wake of an NBC News report that Biden is — get this — upset with his staff for making him look incompetent:

Biden is unhappy about a pattern that has developed inside the West Wing. He makes a clear and succinct statement — only to have aides rush to explain that he actually meant something else. The so-called clean-up campaign, he has told advisers, undermines him and smothers the authenticity that fueled his rise. Worse, it feeds a Republican talking point that he’s not fully in command.

We’ve got news for the Democrats: It doesn’t take Republicans to make Joe Biden look incompetent.

Longtime Demo strategist and former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod sees the writing on the wall: “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job,” he says, “and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue.” But then, after this moment of lucidity, Axelrod slips back into unreality:

Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves for steering the country through the worst of the pandemic, passing historic legislation, pulling the NATO alliance together against Russian aggression and restoring decency and decorum to the White House. And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative. He looks his age and isn’t as agile in front of a camera as he once was, and this has fed a narrative about competence that isn’t rooted in reality.“

Oh, Biden’s incompetence is most certainly rooted in reality. Even the, uh, yeah, the klep … the guys who are the kleptocracies know it. Heh heh heh heh heh.

"I need an equivalent of Ron DeSantis,” said one forlorn young leftist to the Times, “a Democrat, but not a 70- or 80-year-old — a younger person. Someone who knows what worked for you in 1980 is not going to work for you in 2022 or 2024.”

Said another: “Democrats need fresh, bold leadership for the 2024 presidential race. That can’t be Biden.”

Nope, that can’t be Biden.