If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cannot handle the rigors of a presidential campaign, he cannot handle the presidency, period.

I know he now says he misspoke about slowing down, but c’mon…

We can pretend otherwise. The corrupt news media certainly will. We can also shy away from that truth out of our own sympathy for the 78-year-old. I know I feel for the guy. While I despise Bernie’s socialist policies and fascist vision of a one-government future, on a human level, no one wants to see anyone buckle to the inevitability of old age, if only because such a thing serves as a reminder of our own mortality.

Here are the sad facts…

Bernie Sanders had a heart attack last week, and now he has announced he will be forced to slow down his campaign. And then he said he misspoke about slowing, and this whole mess can only mean one thing … it’s over..

Looking tired, defeated, and achingly mortal, Bernie told reporters outside his Vermont home, “I certainly intend to be actively campaigning,” he said. “I think we can change the nature of the campaign a bit, make sure that I have the strength to do what I have to do.”

He said he had been doing “in some cases five or six meetings a day, three or four rallies and town meetings and meeting with groups of people.”

“I don’t think I’m going to do that,” he added.

Prior to last week’s heart attack, Bernie was a force of nature, a 78-year-old out hustling, pressing the flesh, going a mile a minute with a mind as sharp as a tack.

But 78 is still 78… And no matter how fast you run, Father Time is going to catch up to a 78-year-old, and that is exactly what happened.

So Bernie will march on, and good for him. He will want to push his issues, set the table with his agenda, speak at the Democrat convention… But a man who has a heart attack while campaigning for president is not going to be president. It’s just too risky. Throwing up in Japan hurt President George H.W. Bush in 1992, age hurt Bob Dole in 1996, age and cancer concerns hurt John McCain in 2008, and Hillary’s obvious health problems hurt her in 2016.

If there is one thing Americans still agree on, it is that a president must be healthy, robust, virile, a physical dynamo. Bernie tried his best to prove he still was, but all he ended up proving is he is mortal — you know, just like the rest of us.

Which brings me to Joe Biden…

Biden is only a year younger than Bernie and nowhere near as vigorous. Already, his eye has filled with blood on national TV, his dentures came loose during a national debate, and his schedule comes closer to banker hours than a man with the physicality required to run the free world. Due to his own health issues, his limited intelligence, his embrace of racists, his own racism, his own gaffes, and the fact that no amount of media spin can remove the layer of slime all over his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative rent-seeking in Ukraine and China, he has collapsed in the polls. He is no longer the frontrunner.

You know, it is as if the political gods are deliberately moving all the pieces into place to ensure clarifying the 2020 presidential election is between President Trump and a fake Indian slash socialist who wants to take away our health insurance, confiscate our guns, and replace us all with more compliant illegal aliens.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.