First, Hunter Biden’s gonzo incompetence in abandoning his “laptop from hell” in a Delaware computer repair shop has caused a drip-drip-drip of salacious news that has kept this story alive, and, to their credit, House Republicans have done yeoman’s work in uncovering one bit of evidence after another. And it’s worth remembering that the House GOP has done this work on a razor-thin margin of seats in the chamber. If a half-dozen races had gone the other way in November 2022, and Hakeem Jeffries was speaker rather than minority leader, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.

As it stands, with yesterday’s report that Joe Biden, while vice president of the United States, communicated via pseudonym — “Robert L. Peters” — with his son, Hunter Biden, and his son’s business associates, I think the time is rapidly approaching when Democratic Party leaders are going to have to make a decision: Do we ride into the next election with an octogenarian, unpopular, and increasingly tainted nominee, or do we change horses?

[They have to get rid of Kamala Harris first. There is no scenario in which Biden “retires” that nominating anyone other than Harris works. The party anointed her as The Diversity Future by putting her on the ticket in 2020, and pushing her off the next ticket in favor of Some Random White Dude will create a bitter internecine feud. And Harris is so terrible at politics that they simply cannot nominate her unless they really just want to let her lose to get her out of the way. They’re stuck with Biden. — Ed]