When Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, a proposal to use advanced technology to protect the U.S. from missile strikes, some of his critics predictably balked. Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) described it as Reagan’s “reckless ‘Star Wars’ scheme,” giving the project its enduring nickname. (Why Kennedy thought it would help Democrats politically to associate Reagan with some of the most popular movies ever made is a mystery.)

Now, the ongoing controversy over whether Joe Biden ought to step down as the Democrats’ presidential nominee has his party reaching for another Star Wars analogy: Biden as Yoda.

Per the Wall Street Journal:

Some of President Biden’s top donors have latched on to a “Star Wars” analogy aimed at keeping nervous supporters from defecting: President Biden is like Yoda—old and frail yet wise and influential—whereas Donald Trump is like Jabba the Hutt, a gluttonous and powerful gangster.

Let’s think about this. Old and frail Biden is, yes. Influential, maybe — at least by dint of his (current) position in the White House and as de facto head of the Democratic Party. But . . . wise? At, charitably, his most Yodaesque, Biden’s remarks about infrastructure may resemble Yoda’s gnostic mysticism about the Force.

Compare Biden (“These chips, these wafers, are batteries, broadband — it’s all infrastructure. This is infrastructure”) — and Yoda, describing the Force: “For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.” But this only underlines the all-encompassing vacuity of the Left’s talking points — “democracy is infrastructure!” — as well as the infinite storytelling malleability of the Force.

Both figures speak oddly, yes. But Yoda, at least, dispenses what passes for wisdom in Star Wars. “You must unlearn what you have learned,” he tells Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back as the latter’s Jedi training begins. “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering,” he warns Luke’s father, Anakin, in The Phantom Menace.

On his best day, Biden can read words written for him on a teleprompter. In less favorable situations, he nonsensically declares that “we beat Medicare!,” rides trains of thought to destinations unknown, and produces slurry garbles that resemble something you might hear at the Mos Eisley Cantina.

A one-time stutter not in evidence for most of his political life cannot explain this. In this respect, Yoda, he is not.

The only way Joe Biden resembles Yoda is if you accept that much of Yoda’s advice is actually bad. There is a plausible case for this. ^“No. Try not. Do . . . or do not. There is no try,” he absurdly tells Luke in Empire. “No, no! There is no ‘why!'” he likewise upbraids Luke. The Force, as interpreted by Yoda, is just vibes. And vibes are now all Biden has left. He’s barely even trying to explain anymore why he’s doing what he’s doing. He is, instead, resorting to rote appeals to his self-justifying personal mythology, a cut-rate monomyth: “I am running. I am the leader of the Democratic Party. No one is pushing me out. I’ve been knocked down before and counted out my whole life.” If there’s a “why” to be detected in this, it’s pure stubbornness (or something else).

Puncture the myth that Yoda is some great sage, and further likeness to Biden emerges. Yoda failed to see the greatest threat to the Jedi even when it was right in front of him. He failed to defeat that threat; Jedi died as a result. He went into exile, hid the truth from the one person who might have been able to redeem his life’s work, and then died while speaking to him. Biden has presided over a deteriorating global-security situation and continues to go to great lengths to hide from everyone an obvious reality. Nervous elected Democrats, perhaps fearing their own electoral Order 66, gingerly venture into public skepticism about Biden by questioning his electability. Maybe there’s a Yoda resemblance after all.

Biden defenders have also resorted to another analogy: Reagan himself. Reagan, too, was old, they say; he, too, had a bad first presidential debate. But any honest assessment of the later years of Reagan’s presidency, and even the final years of his public life, will conclude that this comparison, too, falls apart upon close inspection. Analogies won’t save Biden now. He is in a situation beyond compare. And he has only himself to blame.