Last week, we wrote here about the 2024 outlook for Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In other words, Biden is going to run again. And according to some press reports, the people who tell him what to do already are laying plans. Axios reports they intend to have Joe Biden fly above the political traffic and not dominate the news cycles.

In one sense, that’s a smart move because these days when Joe Biden is in the news, he’s doing strange things like offering a toast to our NATO ally “Frank.”

Good luck ignoring the news cycle, even with his sympathetic press pack, when Donald Trump, DeSantis, and other GOP candidates draw up the heavy artillery to remind voters, among other things, about inflation, the end of energy independence, supply chain shortages, and his wayward son’s misplaced laptop so full of incriminating details.

For a while this fall, party progressives mumbled among themselves over an alternative to Joe Biden.

In their optimistic mindset, the fact that Republicans “only” won the House of Representatives, where all financial legislation originates and which can block anything the Democrat Senate passes, is a big win in their eyes. So, they’ll ride Biden’s coattails as long as he’s not falling somewhere new.

Then, they realized they’ve got no one else anyway. Democrats’ farm team membership for future federal office getting seasoning down at the state level was virtually demolished by the 2010 Republican midterm landslide. Maybe pick an obscure Democrat governor who could pass the spendthrift smell test.

They might consider Bernie Sanders. Sanders has purchased an additional house after each of his three unsuccessful White House efforts. But he’d be 83 when he lost his next White House bid in 2024.

Of course, there’s Vice President What’s-Her-Name who talks like the Muppets’ Swedish chef. Biden handpicked her for one unspoken reason, and that was not intelligence, speaking strength, or ability to step into the presidency.

Democrats usually favor senators for their tickets. So, maybe Amy Klobuchar, who throws staplers when angry at staffers and comes from notoriously liberal Minnesota.

That’s the sole state that former senator Walter Mondale captured in 1984 when he took on Ronald Reagan. Republicans prefer successful executives for their tickets, like Reagan, George W. Bush, DeSantis, and Trump, maybe Nikki Haley, or Mike Pence, who quit the House to be Indiana’s governor.

Because Biden voters didn’t want to see the 2020 campaign danger signals in his confused outbursts, his basement campaign, and those two-hour workdays, they voted for him in order to defeat Trump.

Now, they’re stuck with Biden and the ominous historical precedent even if they did get him to retire. Every modern political party whose incumbent president chose not to seek a second term has lost the next two presidential elections. (Truman 1952, Johnson 1968). Both were Democrats and former vice presidents, just like Biden.

Any GOP nominee would be good with that.

A September poll found 56 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaners want someone other than Biden as their 2024 nominee. Sixty-five percent in another poll, in November, said Trump should probably or definitely not run again.

Neither Biden nor Trump are listening.

It’s already rather entertaining watching liberal media cover for an enfeebled Joe Biden.

You know the tack, it’s just good old Joe Biden being goofy Uncle Joe, sniffing women’s hair, holding their hands too long, swearing on open mics, forgetting names, making up stories – “The economy is strong as hell” —  or about his academic achievements, his outstanding athletic career, his historic devotion to civil rights, his career as an 18-wheel driver.

Who lies about things so easily checked?

Chuckle. Chuckle. You need to understand, Democrats say, lies make Joe authentic. In their world perhaps. Who’s gonna believe Biden when he tells parents their child needs to go into battle for him?

So, shaking hands with invisible people is perfectly normal. Looking for a dead congresswoman in the audience can be dismissed. Forgetting the name of Cabinet members standing next to him or allied leaders doesn’t matter, unless you want them to remain trusting close allies.

Calling for the ouster of Russia’s leader during his war isn’t dangerous. Vowing to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan when you don’t mean it can be walked back by flunkies. Same for declaring U.S. troops are where they aren’t.

The problem is that after Joe Biden gave up his early GOP inclinations for a six-term Senate sinecure as a Dem and two terms as Barack Obama’s useless sidekick, he was not commander in chief.

He did not have the power to send our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, moms, sisters to their deaths in open-ended foreign military adventures like the 2011 campaign to oust Libya’s leader by the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, he does and His Elected Goofiness is scary.

By the way, that’s the kind of foreign military involvement with inevitable mission creep that the reviled Trump refused to launch.

Goofy is not a label that should be on anyone with that power, not even affectionately.

Biden typically does one event per day. He has spent about 40 percent of his 23 months in office on vacation or out of public sight in Delaware, where his visitors and activities go undocumented.

So, here’s the N.Y. Times last week helpfully explaining why there really shouldn’t be any physical or cognitive problem with an aged president who’s fallen twice recently that we know of – off a bike and boarding an airplane.

The paper interviewed 10 experts in aging who’ve never examined Biden. But they came to the unanimous conclusion that Biden “has a lot going in his favor.”

One doctor suggested Biden might be a “super-ager, a subgroup of people that maintain their mental and physical functioning and tend to live longer than the average person their age.”

No one who’s watched Biden speak, whisper, or shout inexplicably honestly thinks he has maintained full mental and physical functioning. How about the August day when he couldn’t figure out how to put his jacket on by himself?

What's going on here? pic.twitter.com/ICzLGFH0bn

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 8, 2022

According to another doctor, “Slippage of memory is something that is usual, but it is not a real deficit.” So, it doesn’t matter to listeners when he calls Kamala Harris president or can’t remember the name of that huge five-sided building that’s military headquarters.

Yes, these experts admitted that dementia strikes 10 percent of elderly age 80 to 84 and 20 percent after that. But, they reassured, Biden “is highly educated, has plenty of social interaction, a stimulating job that requires a lot of thinking, is married and has a strong family network — all factors that, studies show, are protective against dementia.”

So, don’t believe your lying eyes.

Look, let’s be honest here for the sake of our national interest. Forget the cheerleaders. Both of our political parties are in leadership trouble. Trump claims to be atop the GOP. Biden will be challenged, if our system works properly.

That seems like a substantial “if” these days.

Biden is already nine years beyond the average life expectancy of a male born in 1942. What happens if, God forbid, he becomes incapacitated closer to 2024? He’s already had two life-threatening aneurysms, takes medicines for an irregular heartbeat, and shows some unexplained marks on his body and hand.

“No one,” stated one of the Times doctors, “can predict how a single individual will fare.”

Possible scenario: A shaky Harris becomes commander in chief. Republicans are in the midst of a mean generational struggle over leaders and party direction. The country is gripped by recession, even a mild one. Americans who made the choice for Biden are troubled, albeit silently. The others are angry. Allies are shaken, uncertain.

America’s adversaries are emboldened by the turmoil and perceived weakness. They seize local opportunities or, frighteningly, beyond. You’ll notice Russia’s Vladimir Putin didn’t dare launch his Ukraine invasion until Biden was in and Trump was gone.

It would be a perfect storm of adversity fueled by ambition, vain hopes, blind partisanship, voter inattention, and media malfeasance. And no one can predict now how a comfortable nation would fare.