It’s been a pretty lousy week over here, especially given what you’ll see at the bottom of this column. There’s a decent chance it’s been a lousy week where you are as well.

But politically, for those of us on the right, the lousiness can be somewhat attenuated by something made clear in a CNN poll released on Thursday — namely, that the political winds are blowing very hard right into the faces of the Left and the dirty, doddering dunce they’ve chosen as their government avatar.

To wit…

1. CNN Says the Folks Really, Really Don’t Like Dirty Joe

If a Republican posted the kind of numbers that Joe Biden put up in that CNN poll, the legacy media would be writing the epitaph for the guy’s career, and few would be complaining. These are some pretty disastrous findings:

Views of Biden’s performance in office and on where the country stands are deeply negative in the new poll. His job approval rating stands at just 39%, and 58% say that his policies have made economic conditions in the US worse, up 8 points since last fall. Seventy percent say things in the country are going badly, a persistent negativity that has held for much of Biden’s time in office, and 51% say government should be doing more to solve the nation’s problems.

Perceptions of Biden personally are also broadly negative, with 58% saying they have an unfavorable impression of him. Fewer than half of Americans, 45%, say that Biden cares about people like them, with only 33% describing him as someone they’re proud to have as president. A smaller share of the public than ever now says that Biden inspires confidence (28%, down 7 percentage points from March) or that he has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president (26%, down 6 points from March), with those declines driven largely by Democrats and independents.

Roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence (73%), and his ability to serve out another full term if reelected (76%), with a smaller 68% majority seriously concerned about his ability to understand the next generation’s concerns (that stands at 72% among those younger than 65, but just 57% of those 65 or older feel the same).

It’s even worse than that. Biden’s personal approval rating sits at 35 percent, which is an identical number to Trump’s — and that’s something worth considering as we wrestle with the narrative that Trump can’t win because single women won’t vote for him, etc. Interestingly enough, a lot more people polled say they wish somebody other than Biden headed the Democrats’ ticket than say the same about Trump. In fact, two-thirds of Democrats surveyed say they want a different nominee, which has to be some kind of a record. (READ MORE: American Despotism)

2. So Why Not Just Change Dirty Joe Out?

Here’s where things become really problematic for the D-team:

A broad 67% majority of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters now say it’s very or extremely likely that Biden will again be the party’s presidential nominee, up from 55% who felt that way in May. But 67% also say the party should nominate someone other than Biden – up from 54% in March, though still below the high of 75% who said they were seeking an alternative last summer.

That remains largely a show of discontent with Biden rather than support for any particular rival, with an 82% majority of those who’d prefer to see someone different saying that they don’t have any specific alternative in mind. Just 1%, respectively, name either of his two most prominent declared challengers, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or Marianne Williamson.

The Democrats don’t have anybody else who even their own voters have any use for.

This is a real problem. Because as Byron York notes at the Washington Examiner:

Then pollsters asked, “What is your biggest concern, if any, about Joe Biden as a candidate for president in 2024?” A huge majority of Democrats, not the electorate as a whole, but Biden’s own party, named issues related to Biden’s age. Forty-nine percent answered “his age/too old/need someone younger.” Seven percent answered “his mental competence/sharpness/senility.” Another 7% answered “his health.” And another 7% said “ability to handle the job/effectiveness.” Added together, that is 70% of Democrats who have serious concerns about whether Biden, who would start a second term at age 82, is up to the job of president of the U.S.

People who are not Democrats can see even more clearly that Biden isn’t up to either doing the job of being president or campaigning for reelection. After all, you have to be a pretty hard-cord Democrat to watch something like this and not think it’s disqualifying:

Yesterday, President Joe Biden abruptly left the Medal of Honor ceremony before it had ended.

Today, Karine Jean Pierre explained that this was all part of the plan because Jill Biden is sick.

All you can do is laugh at this point.

“He left as planned as it was planned. Uh, he… pic.twitter.com/ponkjc50ve

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 6, 2023

KJP’s ridiculous attempts at justifying Biden’s walking out on a Medal of Honor recipient, whose facial expression betrayed that he clearly didn’t think the departure was “planned,” don’t really help anything. Especially when this behavior happens over and over again.

Nobody seems to want Biden to run again, and most people don’t think he’s capable. And yet only Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the opponents so far?

Where are the heavyweights, such as they are? Where’s Gavin Newsom? Where’s J. B. Pritzker? Phil Murphy? Gretchen Whitmer, P-Butt? Amy Klobuchar? Where’s Liz Warren, for crying out loud? That woman is incapable of taking no for an answer.

Nobody has gotten in. The public is begging someone to get in and nobody’s doing it. While Biden is running an even less vigorous campaign than he did in 2020.

It’s weird, isn’t it?

3. The Explanation Is Pretty Obvious

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you will have seen this theory mentioned before, but it bears reiterating now. The reason none of these guys and gals have jumped into the Democrat primary race against Biden is that none of them have the imprimatur of the machine that runs the party.

And that machine belongs to Barack Obama.

Let’s remember that it isn’t just Biden but also Kamala Harris who head up the Democrats’ ticket. And Team Obama, if you’ll also remember, had been pushing Harris as a chosen successor in 2020 before settling on Biden when Harris completely flamed out of the primary race.

Those were possibly the two worst candidates in that massive field the Democrats had, but they were the two with the closest connection to the Obama machine. And magically — just magically — it worked out that the two Obama puppets filled the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the ticket.

And don’t ever forget thisL

Obama visits the Whitehouse and old Joe, is not exactly holding court. pic.twitter.com/iwehYBXg1e

— LdogExtreme????????☘️ (@LdogExtreme) April 5, 2022

There is no credible challenge to the Obama machine extant in the Democrat Party right now. Anybody who would displace Biden or Harris at the top of the ticket would have to swear allegiance and become the next puppet for the Kalorama Krewe.

And nothing we’ve seen out of Newsom, whose name is the most prominent among the “outside” prospects to succeed Biden, indicates he’d accept status as a puppet. Newsom has an even bigger ego than Obama does.

So this is the holding pattern the Obamunist Democrats are in. They’re wishcasting that Biden can hang on long enough to limp across the Election Day finish line next year, when the odds of that happening get longer and longer due to the corruption investigations into his kid’s influence-peddling business that he was clearly involved in (and the CNN poll shows that by a 61–38 margin the public thinks Biden’s denials of involvement are lies) and his continually worsening mental state. And they’re doing that because they’re no longer capable of holding an open contest among the voters.

Meanwhile Biden is tanking among minority voters. The CNN poll shows him at only 58 percent among non-white voters in a head-to-head with Trump, and he’s only at 53 percent with women. Biden actually loses a head-to-head matchup with Nikki Haley 49–43, though there’s zero chance of that coming to pass regardless of how much the GOP establishment and the donor class might fantasize about it.

4. Does This Mean We Can See the End of Obamunism?

It’s hard to say, really, because right now anybody who claims to know how the 2024 election cycle will shake out is either insane or they’re selling something. I’ll even apply that to my buddy Kurt Schlichter, who keeps screaming that the GOP can’t nominate Trump because he can’t win a general election. Kurt does identify some valid concerns, to be sure, but the CNN poll shows that the Democrats’ problems are every bit as formidable as those of the GOP with or without Trump.

Schlichter does have something to say in his most recent column that is spot on, namely that “dooming,” as conservatives are far too wont to do, should cease to be a thing:

Dooming makes you forget about the fact that the other side in this cultural struggle has its own problems. We conservatives are not facing geniuses. We are facing a bunch of narcissistic halfwits who are not a tenth as brilliant as they believe they are, and who inherited their cultural positions instead of creating them. We’re not fighting a bunch of cunning Darth Vaders. We’re fighting a bunch of pronoun-obsessed dorks, many of whom can’t even do a push-up. And all the while, we got 400 million guns.

But what’s true is that the Obama machine, the Obamunists, are ruthless and relentless. They learned how to grift and steal, and they have almost unlimited resources as a result, and they will deploy those resources toward the end of grabbing and holding power over their fellow man without limit or reservation.

Even so, it takes talent to run a political machine. It isn’t enough that Obama and what remains of his inner circle, those C-listers who haven’t moved on to cushy fancy corporate jobs or sold out in other ways, might still be around. You’ve got to have fresh folks coming in all of the time. And how many truly talented political operators do you see bubbling up on the Democrat side right now?

If these people can’t win in 2024, after all the stops they’ve already pulled out, what happens then?

This is the problem Team Obama has. While we’re all busily dooming, in Schlichter’s words, on the right, the other side is utterly failing. They’ve laid down four different sets of indictments of Donald Trump and a CNN poll still has him up 47–46 on Biden.

What else can they do?

Better question: what else can they do that they haven’t already reached diminishing returns with?

The COVID Redux plan is not a good one. The Right-Wing Terrorists narrative is all played out. It’s hard to imagine starting a war with Russia to create some sort of FDR 1940–type scenario would work for them. It’s hard to imagine another indictment of Trump that even the Democrat voters out there will find persuasive or meaningful.

Tucker Carlson asked Trump a couple of weeks ago if he thought the next step was to assassinate him. That might have seemed an odd question to ask, but on the other hand I’ve found that if you consider the Left’s current aggression, whether cultural or political, and carry it out to the furthest extremity of absurdity you can conjure, you will have arrived upon the Left’s next aggression. So don’t put anything past them.

Which is to say that, barring a trip far beyond the pale the consequences of which are wholly impossible to predict, the regime currently running the country might well be running out of both gas and time. And long-term. that would be a very good thing.

Though short-term, the ride will undoubtedly be quite turbulent.

I make no predictions here. My purpose is to convince you that you shouldn’t, either. And you especially shouldn’t be dooming — Schlichter is completely right about that. The fight is not lost unless you choose to be a loser.

5. Speaking of a Fight, an Unpleasant One Here at Home

I’ve noted in a previous column, one written a surprisingly and pleasantly long time ago, that I’ve got a wonderfully friendly and happy old pal living with me, a brindle-colored boxer by the name of Bingle — but there is trouble on the horizon for the little fella.

Bingle has throat cancer. His epiglottis is all swollen up, and it’s hard as a rock. This was diagnosed more than eight months ago, and at the time I thought the end was near for him.

But other than some absolutely amazingly noisy snoring and the occasional old-guy coughing, he really hasn’t shown any negative effects from his condition. Bingle still eats like a small horse, he’s got tons of energy and personality, and he’s fought back nicely from this frightening condition. I’ve been amazed at how he’s rallied.

But Wednesday night he started crying as he swallowed, and Thursday morning he turned down a Milk Bone for the first time in his life.

Uh oh.

So I brought him back to the vet, who knocked him out and then took a look at that epiglottis. It’s worse. It’s about the same size and still hard as a rock, but now it’s got lesions all over it.

There’s nothing much we can do, other than putting Bingle back on prednisone. That seems to work when we give it to him.

When I brought this up a while ago in this column, I called it a Long Goodbye. And it’s still that. I think — I hope — he’s got some mileage left in him yet.

But this week the Long Goodbye might have gotten a little shorter. And that’s hard. I’m hoping this episode will pass.