Everyone assumes Biden will run, though now they’re wondering. He’s said countless times that’s his “intent.” But he’s already blown through several announcement opportunities with no new target date in sight.

His wife Jill says she’s good with a run, and she has a Ph.D. “It’s Joe’s decision,” she told CNN. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there. If he wants to do something else, we’re there too.”

His wife, who’s nine years younger, is often seen leading Biden around by the hand, lecturing or steering him offstage. She tries to make a second-term call seem like it’s all up to hubby.

Few honest people believe that. The president himself often states that an unidentified “they” are telling him what to do and say, or not do and say. And he has at times accidentally displayed staff notes reminding him of important things to do in a meeting, like say hello and sit in an empty chair.

Every day Joe Biden sets a new record for oldest president still in office. He turns 81 this year and would be 86 at the end of another term.

His light workdays and short work weeks, his frequent mental and verbal stumbles and confusions, combined with his nursing-home shuffle and that glassy-eyed glaze already cause fears about this commander in chief.

An Albanian Alexa could recite his speech lines better. Biden reads a teleprompter like a movie robot, often mindlessly including parenthetical stage directions (“Repeat this line.” “Pause here.”) Biden also squints at the teleprompter, though the type size resembles top lines on eye charts.

When Biden is decisive, like killing U.S. energy independence on his first day in office, he’s actually damaging the country.

Fears are growing. And not just because the vice president is frightening too. Biden dithered over picking Kamala Harris as his VP partner in 2020. And he still screwed it up.

The 58-year-old rookie senator checked a couple of boxes politically important to Biden before the election.

But other boxes are more important to average citizens. Things like smarts, leadership, and public-speaking ability were clearly not among Biden’s selection criteria. His White House quite often ships her and her husband out of town separately to appearances unworthy of the Big Guy.

Biden dithers daily. He is routinely late for appearances, sometimes hours late. Remember his indecision over running for president in 2016, when it was Hillary Clinton’s turn? And again before 2020?

He was two months late recognizing the infant formula shortage. And months too early declaring victory over COVID.

The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was scheduled for April 2021, before the fighting season. Biden delayed it first to September, the peak combat time, then back to August.

But then in July, without notice to allies or evacuation planning, he pulled everyone out one night, then sent troops back in for evacuations, but canceled them before completion after 13 military deaths.

Biden was also late announcing the classified document imbroglio last fall and then late explaining it: They were locked in a garage with his Corvette in the house where influence-peddler Hunter lived.

But the president was quite early talking about a second term. The subject is always important to presidents to maintain their political relevance and clout and avoid the dreaded lame-duck label that instantly neuters them.

Biden first referenced a second term very early in the first, when no one was asking. He began bringing it up again seven months ago, as if to reassure himself. And perhaps shoo away any interloper.

Last fall, Biden said he’d make a final reelection decision over the holidays when he routinely borrows a billionaire’s home in the Virgin Islands. When he returned, however, there was no word. Maybe by the State of the Union address? Nope. Or right after? Still nothing.

Recently, a Telemundo interviewer asked why the delay if he had decided. “I’m just not ready to make it,” Biden said like a true ditherer. He also insisted that polls showing Democrats eager for someone else in 2024 were simply wrong.

Modern presidents have tended to announce reelection bids in April or May of the prior year. Earlier dates are left for candidates who need to build name recognition and their brand, although Donald Trump jumped in last fall for his own reasons.

By such standards, Biden could wait two more months and still be on time. But his own defensive chatter and dithering raised expectations for something sooner. And when that failed to appear, party people got nervous, though not by name, of course. Their careers and futures are at stake too. And reporters smell a story. Is it perhaps possible that Biden won’t run but maintains the charade to avoid lame-duck status as long as possible?

Presidential campaigns are multi-billion-dollar operations that take considerable time to fund, staff up, schedule, and draft coherent rationales and policies. Good ones don’t just spring up like March dandelions. This applies to incumbents and potential substitutes, who also hold themselves in high esteem.

Out of respect for Biden, all prominent Democrat wannabes have held back, most saying they will not run if Biden does. Quietly and hopefully, however, they’re each chatting up potential donors, reserving potential staff, and eyeing their most promising political lane.

Every day Biden delays a decision is one less they can campaign for themselves and against Republicans.

If Biden was to drop out for health reasons or because he suddenly grasps the ominous polls that everyone else sees, the sudden explosion of Democrat candidates would be like a Black Friday opening at Best Buy.

Especially because Biden replacements are certain – or hope they’re certain – that Trump will be the 2024 Republican nominee ripe for another defeat.

Vice presidents usually have been considered next in line. But given Harris’ widely-perceived weaknesses, that would not likely hold true this time.

And anyway, vice presidents not succeeding the popular Ronald Reagan have experienced regular failures venturing out on their own. See Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, Al Gore in 2000.

Reporters pecking away at the Biden camp for the campaign announcement scoop will not be the ones who get it. That date, if it comes, will be leaked to some longtime loyal journalist.

Meanwhile, the constant hectoring that Biden invited by all his false timelines, has become annoying to Mrs. Biden. When an AP reporter asked again, she replied, “How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?”

Joe Biden says a lot of things many times, like “That’s the God’s truth” when it isn’t. So, few believe him anymore.

Jill Biden added, “He says he’s not done. He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important.”

Clearly, that’s a space-holder excuse for her husband’s dithering. Joe Biden has nothing else left that he can do. Voters took care of that last fall by electing a GOP House to block any trillions more in spending to please progressives.

Biden could continue his Air Force One junkets close to D.C. so he can get home for dinner, explaining to smallish, but sympathetic crowds how successful his term has been. No, really. That’s the God’s truth.

That is, how the inflation they see with their own lying eyes during every grocery run isn’t really bad, how the energy self-sufficiency he smothered doesn’t really matter because in 15 years his mandate will have them driving electric cars, and how gasoline prices are high but less worse than they were at their worst.

“Biden-Harris ’24, Not as Bad as It Used to Be.”

Nothing seems likely to change significantly Joe Biden’s average job approval (41.3 percent Approval, 51.7 Unfavorable). His job approval on the Economy (37.4 percent Approve, 58.6 Disapprove). Immigration (33 percent Approve, 60.9 Disapprove). Crime (37 Approve, 58 Disapprove). Inflation (33 Approve, Disapprove 62.4).

Or the 65 percent who think the country is headed in the Wrong Direction under his leadership and the meager 26 percent who chose Right Direction.

Or the dwindling 31 percent of Democrat supporters who want Biden to run again while 58 percent prefer someone else atop the 2024 ticket, advanced age being the dominant concern. In 1996, 2012, and 2020, majorities of the incumbent’s party wanted a rerun.

There’s no public sign yet that Democrat bigs will quietly ask him to retire.

Of course, Biden himself could throw his party a lifeline, go out a statesman thinking of others. That seems unlikely given his personality. Truth has never gotten in Biden’s way.

Instead of four more years in government housing, Joe Biden could announce that his work was successfully completed. He had guided the nation through the pandemic, launched the economy on a recovery, caused record-low unemployment, and set the nation on course for a fossil-fuel-free future.

Not to mention sent the Orange Man into exile from the Swamp.

Now, he could say, it’s time to spend all seven days a week in one of his Delaware houses instead of just four days, walk on the beach with Commander, go over the family accounts and classified documents with Hunter, and hire someone to write an allegedly nonfiction account of his 50-plus years in Washington. It’s time for someone else to save blacks from the Party of Lincoln.

But that relief would also be a darkly ominous decision for Democrats. Two other modern presidents chose not to seek election to a second full term – Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Both men were vice presidents who became chief executive on the death of a president.

And both were Democrats.

But the voluntary exits of both men also sentenced their party to two consecutive terms of ensuing Republican White House rule.