And there’s no changing that — Scarlett Johansson and Greg Berlanti’s Rock Hudson-Doris Day NASA romcom is a total corpse. But have any HE regulars at least seen it, and do any of them agree with my take from last weekend, which is that (a) it isn’t half bad and (b) it resuscitates a smidgen of that old American pride feeling that Todd Douglas Miller‘s Apollo 11 reminded us of five years ago?

“Kamala Harris would be the first woman president, the first black woman president and the first Asian president. But I don’t vote for who will be the first. I vote for who will win, and for whatever reason Harris has never been popular.

“You can count the number of delegates she won in the 2020 primaries on one hand. As long as that hand has no fingers.

“In three years as vice-president she’s been quieter than an electric car. And like an electric car, your MAGA uncle can’t explain why she fills him with homicidal rage. Sometimes life isn’t fair, and it’s not fair that she isn’t popular.” Alas…

I’ll tell you two reasons why Harris isn’t popular. One, that cackle. And two, those word–salad statements that she’s shared in interviews.

I can’t quite decide who I hate more — Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It’s just that I’ve despised Trump for so many years. My Biden hate, on the other hand, is fresh and vivid and visceral.

Author of “Battle For The Soul“, Edward-Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN, covering politics and the Biden administration:

“Part of the dynamic here ie that the Obama-Biden relationship is much more complicated than people often understand it to be. They are friendly [but] they are are not friends.

“One person close to the situation said to me a couple of years ago, ‘Neither one of these [men] really has friends, and they’re really not friends with each other.’ They have not been in contact over the last couple of years as people might think. They’ve talked a couple of times.

“Barack Obama has forever been skeptical about Joe Biden‘s chances as a presidential candidate. [Biden has written in his book that] Obama was not encouraging. Obama is not prone to getting involved here. And every time people have reached out to him and said ‘save us, Barack Obama,’ his response has basically been ‘I’m going to stay right here…I’m not saying anything.'”

Not trying to personally persuade Biden to drop out is one thing, but Obama staying silent while pally George Clooney says, with Obama’s consent, what Obama believes to be true is another.

The looming existential threat of Donald Trump‘s likely victory hasn’t gone away. Every sensible person on the planet realizes that Joe’s cognitive diminishment, which is in and out depending on the moment, has only one way to go and that’s downhill.

Every American voter knows this also, and yet Obama would rather let Trump win than stand up and plead for a more hopeful outcome. That’s cowardly. That’s smug. That’s shameful.