The Democratic Party is now in a full-blown crisis of confidence. Part of this is media-fed, since writing "Democrats In Disarray" columns comes so naturally to most pundits, but it really goes a lot deeper than that. There are real worries out there that President Joe Biden is not going to be up to the task of defeating Donald Trump. There were worries about that before the debate, actually, since his poll numbers have been so anemic for so long. But after America saw Biden stumble through a 90-minute debate with Trump, these worries have gotten a whole lot more acute and immediate.

Something missing from much of the media commentary is something I hear a lot from actual voters. The question to them isn't whether Joe Biden is up to the task of being president right now (or through Election Day), it is instead whether he will still be up to that task three or four years from now. After all, we are electing a president not just for the short term, but for another four-year term in office. Is there anyone out there who is supremely confident that Biden will be mentally sharp and decisive at this point in the year 2028? Because what I am hearing is a lot of doubt on that key point. Whatever his current mental state is, four more years of the toughest job in the world is going to take a toll.

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Back in the early 1980s (before he was in his early 80s), the punk band The Clash put out a song asking what has now become Joe Biden's new existential question:

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So you gotta let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

The only problem with fitting the song lyrics to Biden's current conundrum is that it is Joe and Joe alone who will be making this decision. Others can "let him know," but the choice is going to be his and his alone to make.

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President Joe Biden now has absolutely nothing to fear from picking up the phone and ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate Donald Trump. Or perhaps (and more to the point) ordering them to take out two or three Supreme Court justices. These would all be "official acts" of a sitting United States president (the commander in chief giving an order to the military), and therefore Biden would be completely immune from any fear of prosecution afterwards. That is what the Supreme Court just ruled, today.

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I cleared the decks for this column, preferring to spend today reviewing the first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle instead of writing a standard "Friday Talking Points" column. But if I had gone with my weekly format, President Joe Biden would easily have won my Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, hands down. His debate performance last night was not just disappointing, it was downright abysmal.

There's no other way to say it really -- Joe Biden lost the debate to Donald Trump. It was downright painful to watch, in fact. Most people I have spoken to afterwards didn't even make it through the entire thing, because they had to look away at some point.

How bad was it? Well, when the biggest subject Democrats (and most of the pundits) are talking about afterwards is the possibility of Biden stepping down so a new nominee could be chosen at the Democratic National Convention, that's pretty bad.

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The first 2024 presidential debate is now mere hours away. I am going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction for tonight: Donald Trump will announce his vice-presidential pick at some point during the debate. He could do so very early on, in an effort to rattle President Joe Biden and/or to distract from whatever question Trump had been asked (but didn't want to answer), or he could wait until his closing statement and go out with a bang. But my guess is that Trump's big reveal will happen at some point tonight.

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Once again, due to family events outside my control, there will be no column today. I will be posting both tomorrow and Friday, to cover the debates, however.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Four states hold primary elections today: New York, South Carolina, Utah, and Colorado. There are interesting races in all of them -- including a major Democratic showdown in New York -- but the one that interests me the most will happen in Colorado. Because the voters in one House district will have the choice of bringing an end to Lauren Boebert's congressional career.

Boebert's case is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is her toxic personality (she is one of the queens of "anger politics," fighting hard for the reigning title with Marjorie Taylor Greene...). Her obnoxiousness is highly repellant and she deserves ejection from the House by Colorado voters on those grounds alone, in fact. More interesting to the politically geeky, however, is that she is attempting a rather astonishing bit of carpetbaggery in her current run. She is not running to be re-elected in the district she now represents, but instead a different district -- with a heavier Republican lean to it. It is an open seat, made possible by the voluntary midterm retirement of fellow Colorado Republican Ken Buck.

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For very personal reasons (family), there will be no column today. Regular columns will resume tomorrow.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Maybe it's just us, but this week seemed like a waiting game. Perhaps the midweek holiday had something to do with it, but everything in the political world right now seems to be on hold in anticipation of next Thursday's first presidential debate. The debate is going to be incredibly early in the campaign schedule, but nobody really knows what this will mean until after the dust settles. Who will benefit the most from the earliness of it all? Well, that all depends on how they do, of course.

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What is it with Donald Trump and sharks? He seems to be obsessing on the subject somewhat, which only goes to confirm a story Stormy Daniels told a while back. Of course, sharks are pretty scary critters in general, but Trump seems to be exhibiting what can only be called galeophobia -- or, to semi-translate that from the Greek, "sharkophobia."

Perhaps Trump was scarred for life when the movie Jaws first came out, almost 50 years ago? After all, that was when galeophobia sank its teeth (so to speak) into the American psyche in a big way for the first time. Jaws is a frightening movie that is arguably one of the best summer horror flicks of all time, pitting a giant man-eating shark against a peaceful seaside town and Captain Quint (a somewhat-crazed shark-hunter).

Or perhaps Donald Trump recently watched a foreign-language film that's been making a splash (again, so to speak), Under Paris -- which is a sort of cross between Jaws, Sharknado, and Les Miserables. But that's a little hard to fathom -- Trump actually watching a whole movie with subtitles? Sacre bleu! It is to laugh, non?

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