But then Bounce Back Joe trampolined into a temporary delegate lead that, even if California gives it back to Bernie when the counting is finished, was as impressive an impersonation of Lazarus as politics has seen since John McCain got back into the 2008 hunt after carrying his bags forlornly through many an empty baggage-claim area in 2007. My cracked crystal ball goes on to the shelf along with the one that had Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as the Democratic nominee this cycle, which sits next to the one that had Hillary Clinton as president (twice!), which is next to the one that had Mitt Romney as president in 2012. America stubbornly refuses to do what it’s immediate past political behavior indicates that it will.

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But while I was wrong about McCain getting the GOP nomination in 2008, I was right when I repeatedly proclaimed that he would prove a terrible candidate in the general election. And he was. As will be Biden if he survives the hairpin turns ahead and gets in the ring against Trump.

"Biden wasn’t rehabilitated,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told me Wednesday morning. “He was rescued.” Then Murtaugh launched effortlessly into a bark-peeling attack featuring every gaffe Biden has made this cycle, the Burisma scandal involving Biden’s son Hunter and years of policy failures, including Biden’s vote for the Iraq War.

Opinion Who could win the Democratic primary? Use the Post Opinions Simulator to pick a state and see what might happen in upcoming primaries and caucuses.

Suddenly the politics have changed. “Okay, boomer” — that derisive and funny flip-off of older America — is just as suddenly an appeal to younger voters. And it is going to mean President Trump from here on out when, as seems inevitable, Warren drops out and the Democrats face a consolidated battle between their left and liberal wings. With Sanders at 78 and Biden at 77 (the president is 73), the walker count at rallies just skyrocketed, and older pundits seem young again. Everyone in America seems young again. It’s middle-aged morning in America when all the contenders for the next presidential term are looking down at you demographically.

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This is going to be a wild ride.

Two points: First, a hat tip to whoever persuaded Buttigieg and Klobuchar to stand down over the weekend (my bet: Barack Obama). When I predicted Biden’s doom, they were still in the race — as was Bloomberg, who had already blown up himself and half a billion dollars with a pair of debate performances so bad that they made Biden seem eloquent. He quit Wednesday; Warren will have to exit or reveal herself truly indifferent to her proclaimed principles.

Second, I won’t make the mistake of writing off Sanders as I wrote off Biden. The Democratic contest, narrowed to Biden and Sanders, will be focused — fixated, really — on the health of both men and their ability to beat the president.

The key to the rest of the primary campaign and the fall contest if Biden makes it to the top of the Democratic ticket will be a quote from one of the most respected Americans, former defense secretary Robert Gates, who served admirably under presidents of both parties: “I think [Joe Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates wrote in his 2014 memoir. The quote is likely to be featured prominently in the fall campaign if Biden is the nominee — and to lose relevance if Gates emerges to endorse Biden over Trump. But the quotes that will follow Biden are the dozens of gaffes, many of them of recent vintage, that cause Biden doubters to wonder if he’s lost not a step but rather half a lap or more in the years since his vice presidency.

Biden vs. Sanders is going to be an awful fight, fueled by the anger of a rising generation of millennials who see the same string-pullers that engineered Clinton’s nomination four years ago still entrenched at the Democratic National Committee. (Will the DNC establishment, for example, evict Tulsi Gabbard from the March 15 debate in Phoenix, despite her having snared a delegate and qualifying according to current rules?)

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It’s not over even though Biden has had the best week in politics since Trump’s amazing triumph in 2016. Biden’s big night caps an improbable comeback, just as stunning as McCain’s in 2008. But we didn’t see President McCain, did we?