Remember several months ago when Joe Biden was leading the Democratic polls by huge margins? 40-12%? 37-15%? 25-16%? Ahh… the good old days. The days when Joe would boast about beating up Donald Trump after school, at the athletic field. The days when Joe promised he’d win and restore the “Soul of America.” Yes, incredibly, the milquetoast Biden, who’d never authored a single high-profile signature bill in his decades-long gorge at the public trough, whose past presidential runs were notable for his ham-handed plagiarism and inglorious, humiliatingly rapid flame-outs, was somehow leading the Democratic presidential contenders’ field during these early stages.

Some of that, no doubt, was due to the astonishingly low caliber of its unserious candidates. Save one, this is perhaps the least impressive assemblage of box-checking, group-think, pressure-caving candidates for Presidential consideration ever presented. (Tulsi Gabbard displays an adult persona and she alone among the Dems appears to have an actual awareness of foreign policy. Predictably, the Democratic party is forcing her out.)

In this age of Sandy O, where free Government handouts are considered mandatory, the demonization and rejection of American history is worn as a badge of honor, total ignorance by the Millennial-minded of the basic economic principles of the free-enterprise system in favor of what they erroneously think is “Socialism” is commonplace, the Democratic Party puts forth these pathetically unqualified people to become steward of the world’s largest, most important economy and commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military, charged with maintaining stability around a frighteningly unstable globe. There is no actual economic understanding here and even less strategic military comprehension.

As qualifications, Joe Biden had the history of being Barack Obama’s Vice-President for eight years, and unlike Dick Cheney before him, Biden dutifully went back and reprised the traditional VP role of funeral-attender-in-chief and number one Presidential cheerleader. Who can forget Biden’s shining moment, upon passage of ObamaCare, when the hot mic caught him saying, “This is a big f---ing deal.” Certainly, this was a stratospheric high point in a storied public career punctuated with high points too numerous to name.

Hence, Biden entered the race with the name-recognition advantage over all the others, and in early polls, he was likely the only one the respondents had ever heard of.

Unfortunately, Biden has made numerous verbal gaffes and errors since his campaign began. They’ve been widely documented elsewhere and it’s not necessary to list them all again here. They are embarrassing, even humiliating. No Republican candidate could have escaped being savaged by the liberal mainstream media as being either totally incompetent or inexcusably offensive the way Biden has slipped by, but that is a function of the media environment we live in now.

However, the gaffes are not the issue. What is becoming blatantly apparent to even the most casual political observer is Biden’s complete lack of any inspiring ideological vision for the country. He has no core beliefs. Agree or disagree with their vision, Obama, Reagan, LBJ, and JFK had vision. Trump has vision. They wanted to take the country somewhere specific. They had a goal in mind, a strategy for getting there and they believed it was the right thing to do for America.

What is Biden’s vision? Does he have an overriding economic concept for increasing the country’s prosperity? Is there a blueprint on how to handle our role on the international stage, a “Biden Doctrine?” Does he have a long-range energy plan, based on either fossil fuels, a switch to renewables or some meticulously thought-out mixture of the two?

No. Every utterance from Biden on energy, climate change, the economy, taxes, social policy, immigration, international relations, whatever, is made in response to what the other candidates are saying, to what Biden feels will net him the greatest political yield at that moment. Next week, his positions will shift if the prevailing political winds have shifted. As he mentally trips, flops, and stumbles his way from one incoherent non sequitur to the next, the unmistakable -- and dead-accurate -- impression he gives is that here is a disingenuous, shallow, unintellectual, backslapping good ‘ol guy who has skated by, mostly unnoticed, on the public dime for decades, but now that the inescapable spotlight of harsh scrutiny is upon him, he’s being exposed for the empty vessel that he is. If Biden is forced out of the race, it will be because of his total lack of any ideological conviction, zero leadership skills, and his astonishingly limited imagination.

The nomination is still a long way off. Anything can happen. In 2004, it looked as if John Kerry wouldn’t make it. Howard Dean seemed to be the flavor of the month and Kerry’s wooden, Herman-Munster-like stiffness seemed to spell his doom. But against all odds, we had the Dean Scream and Kerry’s subsequent “okay, we’ll take him if we have to” comeback. So a Biden resurgence is still possible, especially if the vaporous, impractical, transparently pandering nature of the others becomes overly obnoxious even to Democratic primary voters.

But at this point, it looks to be yet another poorly-executed, ill-fated Biden presidential bid that ends early. Thankfully, it’s the last one the country will have to endure.