Anti-democracy Democrats ready to inaugurate President Kamala Harris

Amid the Democrats’ chaotic response to the Big Question — can President Joe Biden run for a second term — some things are crystal clear. One is that although most party faithful are falling into line after two weeks of rebellion, almost none of them really believes Biden is up to the job.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), for example, was one of four congressional Democrats among an advance guard saying last weekend that Biden must step down, yet now, with a tone of resignation, he concedes, “He’s going to be our nominee, and we all have to support him.”

“Have to support him” is not a ringing endorsement. It’s no more than a shamefaced acceptance. Like everyone in his party, Nadler knows he’s backing a man manifestly incompetent for the high office he holds, who cannot revive because his mental meltdown in the debate wasn’t due to a curable illness and who will inevitably get more feeble and less able to cope with the strains of leading at home and abroad. Biden is declining fast, and the slide is noticeable not just each year or each month, but almost each week and day.

Democrats “have to support him” because Biden secured 9 out of every 10 convention delegates in the primaries and cannot be dislodged involuntarily, and he has made it plain, as he said to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, that he’ll keep running unless “the Lord almighty [comes and says] ‘Joe, get outta the race.’”