Joe Biden has more cash on hand than any other possible 2024 presidential candidate. Ironically, he also has no re-election campaign to speak of.

You’d think an incumbent president flush with cash would already be doing the groundwork to prepare for the general election, especially given he doesn’t have to spend anything to win the primary. So why isn’t Biden hiring campaign staff?

According to his aides, this is all part of the plan, and that should terrify you.

President Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, has spent her first months on the job planning a sweeping national reelection effort by squatting in a borrowed office overlooking an Amtrak commuter line on Capitol Hill.

With just three other paid staffers, her entire operation cost $1.4 million from April through June — about an eighth of what President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign spent in the same period in 2011, when it operated out of an imposing office suite in Chicago nearly the size of a football field.

Biden aides say that skeletal quality is not a weakness but the plan.

As noted, Barack Obama had spent over $10 million at this point in his re-election effort. As of this writing, Biden has spent just $1.4 million. That’s not something that just happens, especially when money clearly isn’t an issue. Democrat donors and dark money groups are lining up to give Biden all the cash he needs to outspend whoever the eventual GOP nominee is.

So if money isn’t the issue, what is? That’s the part that should worry you because there are a few possibilities, and none of them are good. There’s a certain maniacal confidence about a president who doesn’t even bother to go through the motions of trying to get re-elected. When someone looks too comfortable in a situation that otherwise looks dreadful (i.e. take a peak at Biden’s approval ratings), that should set off your spidey sense.

The first possibility is simple: Biden knows he’s not going to be the nominee.

That could be why Vice President Kamala Harris is suddenly trying to boost herself by going after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Though, the more likely outcome given Harris’ historic unpopularity and hard ceiling of support is that Democrats are banking on California Gov. Gavin Newsom. He’s already been making waves by traveling the country and picking fights with red-state governors

A lot of Republicans will hear me say that and laugh, but Newsom should be taken seriously. Has he destroyed his own state with a litany of horrible policy decisions? Yes, but he’s a slick talker and exactly the kind of figure suburban women tend to swoon over. And guess who pretty much decides our national elections these days? That would be suburban women. I don’t dismiss Newsom at all. If he were to become the Democrat nominee, Republicans would face a far tougher challenge than if Biden remained in place.

That leads me to the second possibility: Biden believes Donald Trump is going to be the nominee.

Trump becoming the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination has been a soothing development for Biden and his ghost campaign. Maybe that’s naive? Maybe it’s playing with fire and the current president will get burned? I’m not arguing those points, and I’m certainly not telling you who to vote for. What I am saying is that there’s no doubt who Biden wants to run against, and that’s important in analyzing his current posture.

If Biden believes Trump will be his opponent, his confidence likely stems from two things. One, he and his handlers believe the Trump cake is baked and that he does not have the ability to sway independent voters he lost in 2020. There is certainly empirical evidence to back up that position. Even with Harvard-Harris in the polling average, an outfit run by Hillary Clinton’s pollster that has become an enormous outlier this cycle, the spread on Trump’s favorable rating is still at -17.5 percent, significantly lower than Biden’s. Why wouldn’t the incumbent look at that and think he can run another basement campaign to victory?

Then there’s the more nefarious and concerning reason that Biden seems so overly confident. Because of the timing of Trump’s classified documents trial and the likelihood of another federal trial surrounding January 6th in a D.C. jurisdiction, the current president is banking on the ultimate October surprise. Namely, facing an opponent who is either in jail or is under some kind of house arrest. AG Merrick Garland is a partisan, and you can bet he’s keeping the White House abreast of how sure the DOJ is of delivering convictions. Biden is acting like a man who already knows the outcome.

In the end, it’s impossible to predict what will happen. But looking at the current position of Biden’s re-election campaign, it’s fairly certain what he and his handlers think will happen. Given how underhanded Democrats have been in the past, that should scare you. If they are confident, you shouldn’t be. How that plays out from here is up to the voters.