The most cutting take on the extraordinary post-debate debacle paralysing US leadership came from security analyst Mike Benz, who declared, ‘The parasite is looking for a new host body.’

For Benz, the Washington deep state is the parasitic Blob, and Joe Biden had always been its frontman, its creature. A new puppet is now required.

Another take came from the reporters at a post-debate Biden fundraiser in New Jersey, who took guesses on how dead Biden appeared to be that particular evening. ‘Forty per cent?’ one hazarded. The New York Magazine piece was entitled ‘The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden’, and is notable for piling up telling details over ‘waxen, unhuman’ Biden’s incapacity at ordinary social events, with even long-time family friends forgotten.

You get the idea. A doomed Joe Biden is bleeding out; indeed he seems to be mentally crumbling by the day. He may even have bowed out by the time you read this. The spectacle of the US thrashing about in leadership turmoil is riveting, but dangerous for the whole globe. Who is actually running the world’s biggest war machine and economy, given that it’s plainly not the 10a.m.-to-4p.m. shadow of a president?

One cannot imagine the powers behind the throne, those who have actually been making the decisions, allowing this to continue for long, but having banked on being able to prop Biden up, they now have no simple options. Turns out it’s not so easy to change an all-but-nominated presidential candidate midstream. Who to? How would it be done? What happens to the Biden-Harris $240 million campaign funding war chest, reportedly not transferable? CNN pundit Van Jones broke through in a rare moment of honesty last week and said, no matter what people were saying publicly, there was full-blown panic behind the scenes. Biden himself says it would take the Lord Almighty to get him out of the race.

Democrat donors, office-holders past and present, media, the blocs and vested interests that make up the ruling regime are now having to rework the 2024 presidential candidacy decision on the run, in backroom conversations, with no clear set-piece rituals such as primaries to focus and hone decision-making. The Democrat National Convention in August provides a stage for an open nomination event, should they choose to use it, but transparency and openness are not the style of the modern DNC – heck, they might lose control! The wrong person might win! Thus Hillary was strongarmed in over Bernie in 2016, and competitors to Biden such as Robert F. Kennedy Jnr were forced out of the 2024 primary process. The Anointed One having blown himself up, the regime is now in an unprecedented crisis without a clear path forward.

This whole imbroglio is an argument for due process, and the stress-testing it includes. Parliamentary systems, where leaders endure the cut and thrust of daily debate, would have long ago found Biden out. Normal US traditions would also have exposed him; open primaries would have forced Biden to sell his policies, as would media interviews and press conferences, had they been permitted. The ruling regime’s excessive power and total control of institutions allowed it to sidestep such safeguards, and now it reaps the whirlwind. The regime includes the toadying media, which in its panic to keep Trump out, forgot about holding politicians to account, and instead became a cheerleader for all things Democrat. The Left’s contempt for tradition and time-tested processes has brought it to this place.

Trump, by contrast, stands battle hardened and proven, having endured all that they threw at him, without ducking the contest. He suffered a blizzard of lawfare, the indignity of a mugshot and the raid on Mar-a-Lago where agents fossicked through his wife’s underwear drawers, not to mention the battery of hoaxes such as collusion with Russia.

One of the latest scams to bite the dust was the ‘fine people hoax’, recently put to rest by fact-checker Snopes. The headline read: ‘No, Trump did not call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists “Very Fine People”’.That fact-check only took seven years. It was a consequential lie, even cited by Joe Biden as his reason for standing for president in 2020, without any major outlets setting the record straight.

US pundit, cartoonist Scott Adams, coined the term ‘hoaxacracy’ to describe rule by hoaxes, the latest debunked hoax being that Biden was mentally sound. ‘Democrats are waking up to the knowledge that they were living in a hoaxacracy of their own making, and their leaders were the baddies all along.’

The aforementioned New York Magazine ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ article, unlikely to have been written or published mere months ago, talks about desperate elites falling back on the eleventh-hour idea that someone else must be in charge or have a plan in the bottom drawer, it was so obvious that Biden couldn’t go the distance. No one wanted to be the one to break ranks and bell the cat, so Joe was in terrific shape until the debate, when everyone was forced to notice that this was untrue. Ferocious protection has now been replaced by ferocious attacks. Group loyalty, the norm in collectivist parties, allows dire situations to develop into real crises, as lemmings loyally go over the cliff together. (Excessive and self-indulgent individualism is the equal and opposite weakness afflicting conservative or libertarian parties).

There’s plenty of blame to spread around for the current spectacle in Washington, and none of it concerns a cold or Biden’s travel schedule. Donors will continue withdrawing their money from a Biden candidacy, and Democrat officials will jointly or singly press for Biden to slip out of the race. Attacks will continue until Biden gives way. Behind closed doors, a new candidate, probably Kamala, will be chosen. When that occurs the Democrats will close ranks and march in lockstep to defeat Trump in November.

Which is entirely possible, given that it is only the Democrat candidate who is in trouble, and the Democrat vote machine remains as lethal as ever.