It’s only February 9th! There’s plenty of time for Joe Biden to collapse his re-election campaign and for the political system to cough up another Democratic candidate for President.

Consider what happened over a six-month period in 1968 — (a) President Lyndon Johnson, the presumptive Democratic candidate for re-election, barely out-points antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary (3.12.68); (b) New York Senator Bobby Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination (3.16.68); (c) Johnson quits in March, (d) Martin Luther King Jr. is murdered at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (4.4.68); (e) RFK is shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (6.4.68); and (f) Humphrey is nominated as Chicago cops wallop demonstrators during the Democratic Convention (8.22 to 8.30).

The whole world changed…everything did. And between now and mid-summer (the 2024 Democratic Convention happens in Chicago between August 19 to 22) we can’t nudge Biden into retiring and install Gavin Newsom in his place?

The withered-old-man thing is obviously a huge and quite possibly fatal problem for Biden. Do we really want the country to be once again roiled and besieged by ludicrous MAGA turbulence, and allow this to happen over a single man’s obstinate refusal to face reality and step aside for the general good?

Biden is clearly declining and a much more frail and muttering fellow than he was even four years ago, and he wants to serve again until January ’29, when he’ll be 86?

Yes, it’s possible that a majority of voters might decide it’s better to send an obviously toxic, deranged and foam-at-the-mouth reprehensible authoritarian back to the White House rather than give Gavin Newsom a try, but I seriously doubt this would happen at the end of the day.