Any hopes that some may have had that Joe Biden would use his Christmas vacation to rethink his plans to try for a second term in office have been dashed. He clearly plans to run again and rather than returning to the office to address some of the disasters he has created, Uncle Joe is hitting the campaign trail. He’ll be heading to some of the country’s historic landmarks, both traditional and recent in the coming week to make his pitch to the nation. Will he be discussing how his policies have made people’s lives better over the past three years? Don’t be silly. No, he will be talking about the Bad Orange Man and January 6, of course. And he will remind you all that fully half of you are deplorable racists. Talk about a positive, uplifting campaign designed to unite the nation! (Associated Press)

President Joe Biden is starting the campaign year by evoking the Revolutionary War to mark the third anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and visiting the South Carolina church where a white gunman massacred Black parishioners — seeking to present in the starkest possible terms an election he argues could determine the fate of American democracy.

On Saturday, Biden will travel to near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago. There, he’ll decry former President Donald Trump for the riot by a mob of his supporters who overran the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

After Valley Forge, Biden will visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the site of one of the true, racist, white supremacist attacks in recent history (2015). In a surprising moment of honesty, the AP describes Biden’s schedule as, “delving into some of the country’s darkest moments rather than an upbeat affirmation of his record.” Is anyone surprised? What part of his record could he possibly point to that would qualify as an “upbeat affirmation?”

Biden plans to describe Donald Trump as “a serious threat to the nation’s founding principles.” His campaign manager summed up the strategy by saying that they are “running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it, because it does.” Could they possibly be any more dramatic? In reality, the people attempting to toss a political opponent off of the ballot and/or lock him up in jail are doing one hell of a lot more to undermine democracy than Trump could ever manage.

Biden’s handlers have to be extremely nervous about this campaign tour. If they weren’t overridden in this decision, they must be getting very desperate watching the boss’s poll numbers continue to collapse as Trump pulls into the lead in many swing states and among demographic groups that Biden carried easily in 2020. Every time Biden takes the stage, his team has to hold their breath and hope that he doesn’t fall down again, wander off in the wrong direction, or simply begin blathering in a demented fashion despite having a script right in front of him. The impression of Biden as being too old for the job and cognitively impaired has already set in with most of the country. Any more spills or gaffes will only add to that characterization.

This is shaping up to be Biden’s “gloom and doom” tour. As I already said, he clearly can’t run on his record, which has been an unmitigated disaster. All he can do is bash Donald Trump, trusting that the majority of the legacy media will sing along with him in three-part harmony. A shorter version of this campaign theme could be described as, ‘Sure, I’ve made a mess of things. But the other guy is even worse!’

Will it work? If we were still in the era of traditional politics from a few decades ago, I would describe this as a non-starter. But the country is so divided now that many progressive liberals will still likely vote for a horrible Democrat rather than anyone with an “R” after their name, even if their own personal lives and finances have been wrecked during Biden’s first term. Republicans can’t take anything for granted at this point, so they need to be pulling out all the stops as we head into the primary season.