Right now, the Democratic Party and its allies in the media know that things are looking well beyond “grim” come November.

We have two polls now that show Biden under 40 percent approval rating, and the rest have him pretty deep underwater. What’s more, the polling for the House and the Senate is getting worse, with last week’s Quinnipiac poll showing both chambers in play for 2022.

Not only that, as I mentioned last week, the Democrats are chasing off anyone who isn’t in total lockstep with the far-left progressive agenda, to the point where anyone who even coughs in a centrist way will be attacked by the Squad, Bernie Sanders, and at least 35 percent of the talking heads on MSNBC. There is no room for non-conformity with the socialists taking over the party.

The issue here is that the media can’t help but cover it. It’s the news. And as much as some of them would like to ignore this and focus on the Republicans, the stories they are picking are really small potatoes and far reaches that don’t provide much of a distraction.

For example, one of the things we’re seeing is a pretty routine thought exercise of “What about such-and-such a ticket for 2024?” But the options these columns are offering are just more bizarre than usual.

"Why not a Manchin-DeSantis ticket for 2024?" (@TheHillOpinion) https://t.co/xH7UGQPXoL pic.twitter.com/02gpCnOc75

— The Hill (@thehill) January 16, 2022

“Why not a Manchin-DeSantis ticket in 2024?” Why not just stop taking whatever drugs lead a person to not only have this thought but lead them to pen it and submit it to someone for publication?

Another distraction now being put forward by the media is the idea that there is some major beef brewing between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

Here’s the problem with this “feud.” Neither man has mentioned the other, and neither man is known for their subtlety when bringing up an opponent. If they were going to go after each other, it would be a lot more open than what the media is reporting.

Let’s say that both of these men are running in 2024. Based on their current popularity within the party, they are going to be two of the top candidates in that election cycle. Both of these men know they need each other right now. DeSantis is showing the Republican alternative to Democratic governance, and Trump is pointing out why it was a mistake to side with Biden over him.

Both men know that their base won’t like it if they attack the other, especially right now when the Republican Party is poised to win big in 2022. So they need to hold their fire. They are smart enough to know this and have people around them smart enough to remind them of this.

I still suspect that the future of the Republican Party is more DeSantis than Trump. I think Trump was a “fire on everybody” type of personality and DeSantis likes to concentrate on tactical and targeted sniping. Where Trump fights all the battles, DeSantis picks strategic ones. As a result, I get the feeling that, come 2024, more Republican voters will like what he’s offering more.

On top of that, I also still suspect that Trump can’t say he’s not running in 2024 before November of this year, but after that he won’t be as vocal about it because it’s not a certain thing. It will come down to the races he’s chosen to get involved with around the country this year and how successful those candidates are. If he is very successful, he will see his brand as still holding strong and capable of winning in 2024.

But, if his candidates don’t do as well, he’s got a far more difficult decision, and I think he’ll go with the one that keeps his reputation as intact as possible. He’ll want to play kingmaker ahead of 2024 and pass the torch to the next Republican candidate. That way, he stays a respected leader of the party without having to deal with all the drama and a not-impossible loss to whoever the Democratic candidate is.

Neither man is going after the other right now, though. They aren’t even mentioning each other. But the media and the Democrats so want there to be Republicans in-fighting that they are willing to make something out of nothing and use it to distract from the fact that the Democratic Party is on the verge of collapse.