Joe Biden, as Representative Spanberger rightly put it, was elected to “be normal and stop the chaos.” And there is some reason to believe that “be normal” comports pretty well with Biden’s personal inclinations: He is a lazy, stupid mediocrity, and the path of normalcy ought to be the path of least resistance. It would be, too, if not for the fact that he is also the hostage of a political party that is addicted to crisis.

When Donald Trump was elected, Democrats howled that it was the end of the country — and Democrats from Joe Biden to Hillary Rodham Clinton, let us not forget, rejected his election as “illegitimate.” But even those of us who opposed Trump also remember that Democrats had said much the same thing about every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower: George W. Bush was going to usher in the dark forces of American fascism (remember Kingdom Coming in 2007 and American Fascists in 2008?), George H. W. Bush was a tool of the “New World Order,” Ronald Reagan a warmongering madman, etc. We had left-wing kooks trying to assassinate Gerald Ford, for goodness’s sake. Our friends on the left have been promising us either a corporate dystopia or a Christian Taliban courtesy of the GOP for decades. So far, neither has materialized.

But it’s not just losing elections. Everything is the end of the world for Democrats. Climate change? End of the world. Economy? End of the world. Caitlyn the social-media intern has to pay back her student loans after Oberlin? End of the whole damned world. Inflation? You can bet your ass that rising prices for groceries and energy would be the end of the world if Ted Cruz were president — but inflation is, apparently, the new homelessness: It’s only an issue when it might hurt a Republican.