With luck, Joe Biden will get the presidential nomination and Republicans will rejoice

OPINION:

What political party does the Democratic Party put you in mind of? Their leader until they settle on a presidential candidate is the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

She is 79 years of age and consults a plastic surgeon as frequently as she consults her hairdresser, according to my sources. Critics remarked on how infrequently during the State of the Union she smiled. Actually, with her skin stretched across her face so tautly she cannot smile. She can hardly blink. Have a heart fellows and fellowesses. She would smile and blink more if she could. I am told she has a very good sense of humor. 

Other leading Democrats are not much younger. There is Crazy Bernie Sanders, who is 78. Incidentally, he recently had a heart attack while on the campaign trail. According to my vast research staff, Bernie is the first presidential candidate ever to have a heart attack while campaigning for president. So it should be no surprise that he favors health care for all, even for household pets. Yet, is this not a conflict of interest or self-dealing or a breach of the emoluments statute? If it is, you can be sure our president will have his aides on Bernie’s trail. Would it not be a hoot to have a horde of the president’s accountants falling on Bernie for favoring Medicare for All given his bum ticker?

Then there is the sprightly Elizabeth Warren, who is 70 and eats nuts and fruits in keeping with her Native American heritage. And forget not Hillary Clinton, the perennial candidate. She is not running right now. She is 72 and has a cough that kicks in whenever she contemplates a run for the White House. Listen for that cough. I would not count her out.

Of course, my favorite Democratic candidate is Joe Biden. He is 77 and consults a plastic surgeon almost as frequently as Mrs. Pelosi. Rush Limbaugh calls him plugs because of his hair treatments. Now cut that out, Rush. Pick on someone who can protect himself, like Joe’s son, Hunter. Hunter is a gifted polemicist, and now that he has settled his paternity suit and has his crack pipe back from that rental car he left it in, he will be a real asset for you on the stump.

I understand from the weekend New York Times that Joe “impressed many observers” at a CNN town hall meeting on Wednesday where he spoke “movingly about helping people who struggle with stuttering — as he once did.” Frankly, when I was young I too had difficulty being understood, particularly after a couple of martinis. I do not know how large the voting bloc is for stutterers in the Democratic primaries or for martini drinkers for that matter, but apparently Joe is going to hone his speeches for, at least, the stutterers. After Joe addressed the stutterers at the Wednesday town hall meeting last week, State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro told the former vice president that Mr. D’Allesandro was “impressed by the connection with the audience. Do more of that,” he reportedly said. 

I am not kidding. The New York Times really recorded all of the above. Read it for yourself. It appeared in the Sunday edition. Joe is my guy.

Well, what political party does the aforementioned collection of septuagenarians and the lone octogenarian put you in mind of? Does the Communist Party of the late USSR ring any bells? Remember it just before the fall of the Berlin Wall? I was never welcomed to Moscow in those days. I think Crazy Bernie was. At least he showed up there for his honeymoon, did he not? I never visited the place, but I am told that in the party’s last days, when the comrades were dropping like flies from age-related maladies and, of course, for alcoholism, they would line their walkers up in the cloakroom of the Supreme Soviet as though it were rush hour at a geriatric ward here in the United States.

So, if I am lucky Joe will get the nomination from the Democratic faithful and we will have a very pleasant campaign this year. As was true back in the 1980s in Russia, the old order of the Democratic Party is now about to fade away. Who will replace it? Congressgirl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? I think that is highly unlikely. But it really does not matter who takes over the leadership of the Democratic Party. As we also saw last week during Donald Trump’s most dramatic week as president, he is poised for four more years. 

• R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author most recently of “The Death of Liberalism,” published by Thomas Nelson Inc.