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Playing the role of life preserver, the liberal media are desperately trying to buoy Joe Biden’s sinking candidacy — but the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee keeps clinging grimly to the anchor that is dragging him down to the depths of political irrelevance.

The New York Times recently published an article arguing that “Joe Biden’s campaign and top donors are racing to reimagine the ways they raise money as worries grow that the coronavirus could choke off contributions from donors big and small.” The article sought to put a positive spin on Biden’s predicament, analyzing how the Democrat front-runner might be able to “close” the “cash gap” with President Trump in the coming months.

Of course, that “cash gap” has existed from the very beginning of the campaign cycle, as the Trump Campaign has consistently outraised all of the President’s prospective opponents. Democrats were hoping that Biden could make up some ground after becoming the presumptive nominee — President Trump and the Republican National Committee currently have more than 10 times as much cash on hand as Biden and the Democrats — and now they’re using the coronavirus pandemic as a convenient excuse for the candidate’s failure.

But the truth is more straightforward, and more devastating, than most liberals care to admit. The fact is, Biden can’t fundraise effectively because he can’t lead or inspire — and every appearance the candidate makes only serves to remind the public of those glaring deficiencies.

The former Vice President has always been a follower and a lackey, as his opponents were eager to point out in the early days of the Democratic presidential primary process. Time and again, the other Democrat candidates called Biden out for exaggerating his political significance and taking unjustified credit for Obama administration policies. They also didn’t take kindly to his opportunistic appropriation of the far-left policy proposals introduced by extremist candidates such as Senator Bernie Sanders.

The real test of Biden’s leadership, however, has come during the coronavirus pandemic, and he’s failing in phenomenal fashion. All Biden has done is repeat discredited Democrat talking points and demonstrate a remarkable lack of knowledge about both the pandemic and the country’s strategy for defeating it.

When President Trump wisely imposed travel restrictions on China back in January, Biden called him “xenophobic.” Now, Biden is hypocritically accusing the President of responding too slowly to the virus, even repeating the thoroughly-debunked lie that Donald Trump called the coronavirus a “hoax.”

The presumptive Democratic candidate’s gaffes have always been legendary, but he’s really outdone himself over the past few weeks, mixing up everything from the trivial to the fundamental while proving utterly unable to put together a coherent sentence without the aid of a teleprompter.

“I suggested we should have people in China at the outset of this event, when it all started, in Luhan Province,” Biden said in a recent interview with MSNBC, referring to CDC personnel. Not only did he confuse the name of the region where the virus originated — the city of Wuhan in Hubei province — but his underlying claim was also blatantly false, since the CDC actually sent a team of experts to China in early January.

Similarly, Biden’s forceful public call for President Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act backfired spectacularly, because the President had already done just that by the time Biden weighed in.

All of this shows that the “cash gap” liberals are so anxious for Biden to close has nothing to do with the presumptive nominee’s inability to campaign in person. As usual, donations aren’t the cause of a candidate’s success, but a result of a candidate earning the trust of a large number of enthusiastic supporters.

The Trump Campaign’s record-setting fundraising is a reflection of the esteem Americans have for Donald Trump; the Biden camp’s embarrassing failure to fundraise is a reflection of Joe Biden’s undeniable inability to lead or inspire.

Kimberly Guilfoyle (@KimGuilfoyle) is a Senior Advisor to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and National Chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee,