Here’s hoping for a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024

Asking a Democratic political leader to visit East Palestine, Ohio is like getting them to go down to El Paso.

It is just not going to happen. It is easier to go to Kiev or Taiwan.

Joe Biden won’t go. Kamala Harris won’t go either. Apparently, there are no votes to pick up among ordinary Americans living in besieged border towns, or among the working-class folks of East Palestine.

They may be American, but in Biden’s eyes they are Donald Trump voters, which means they are second class citizens, if not outright racists and neo fascists.

Biden has governed not so much as the president of the United States but as president of the Democratic Party.

Biden’s aim never was to unite the country. His aim was to keep division alive, to fan the flames, which he has done. He is and has been either unable or unwilling — or both — to bring the country together.

His aim was to unite the Democratic Party around him.

And he has succeeded. That is why there is no Democratic politician of any substance brave or foolish enough to challenge him if he seeks re-election, even if they believe (as they do) that he is too old for the job.

What adds to their political anguish is that they know that Kamala Harris would become president if Joe Biden should die in his second term. He is already the oldest president in history and would be 86 if he completed a second term “Just watch me,” is Biden’s response is when asked about his age affecting his ability to govern.

And the funny thing is that when people do watch him, or the string of stumbles, mumbles, falls, brain freezes, meaningless word salads, gaffes and lies in a montage, they are stunned that he is still functioning as president, let alone planning to run again.

But Biden is most likely running again, and Kamala Harris is running with him.

Joe Biden looks at it this way: He is the most successful president since Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower put together, so nothing will stop him from a second term.

His most likely opponent is going to be Donald Trump, who is on the other side of the divided country. In fact, he and Biden are the ones who divided the country between them in the first place.

Trump, 76, is no spring chicken either. Biden beat him before and he can beat him again.

Also, the Republican primary is shaping up to be a bloodbath. Half the other the Republicans running for president or planning to do so worked for Trump when Trump was president or owe him —vMike Pence as vice president, Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations and Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida.

All Trump has to do—and will do—on a crowded television debate stage is turn to Pence and say, “Mike, I never should have picked you. You betrayed me.”

Or point at Mike Pompeo and say, ” Mike I should have fired you when I had the chance.’

Or to Nikki Haley, “I never would have appointed you if I knew you’d go hysterical on me.”

Or to DeSantis, “Ron, you never would have gotten elected without me.”

And then, turning to the national audience, Trump would say, “”Folks, you have to understand, I made these people and now you see how they all have betrayed me. These are not good people.”

Biden verses Trump. Trump verses Biden.

How can history not grant us this great rematch?