Let me sum up the next 12 months of the Biden campaign for you:

1. Every day, multiple times a day, he will strain in embarrassing ways to signal his wokeness.
2. The left will scorn him more with each new pander.
3. Righties will enjoy the spectacle of a phony eating sh*t for trying to kiss progressive ass immensely.

Really, the guy can’t jump in soon enough.

Here’s a sneak preview of what’s to come as Biden grasps for ways to convince the left to absolve him of his ideological sins. Step one: Team Biden whispers to the media that they’re looking at Stacey Abrams as a potential early VP nominee. Step two, inevitably: He eats sh*t for it.

But other people in Abrams’ orbit are frustrated by a sense of unfairness over the Abrams-Biden whispers, with some feeling as though Abrams should run herself. (Perhaps in a nod to those supporters, Abrams suggested Wednesday that such an arrangement would not diminish her accomplishments, but highlight and accentuate them.) Those people, who did not want to go on the record, said that Biden’s age, checkered history on criminal justice, and his treatment of Anita Hill, make him unfit for the office of president.

“What makes it particularly exploitative is that Biden couldn’t be bothered to endorse Stacey in the gubernatorial primary,” one adviser told BuzzFeed News, echoing a sentiment that a move to add Abrams to a ticket at an early stage would signal desperation. “Now he wants her to save his ass. That’s some serious entitlement.”

Step three: You and I have ourselves a laugh, secure in the knowledge that there’ll be many similar laughs to come as Biden tries to win the Woke Olympics only to find himself disqualified from every event. Abrams herself was asked yesterday about the possibility of joining Team Biden early and gave a solid answer:

JUST IN: Asked about rumors Joe Biden might consider selecting her as his 2020 running mate, Stacey Abrams tells @TheView, "I think you don't run for second place."

"If I'm going to enter a primary, then I'm going to enter a primary." https://t.co/dMeVjlPoyT pic.twitter.com/avqwLUco01

— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) March 27, 2019

It was arguable whether adding Abrams to the ticket early would have helped Biden or hurt him. It wasn’t arguable that it would have hurt Abrams. She would have had to answer for his sins, which would have cost her some of her progressive fan base, with no guarantee that Biden’s frontrunner status would have held up for long. Joining his ticket likely would have disqualified her from joining the eventual nominee’s. By holding back and waiting to see how the primaries shake out, she’s still in position to be Biden’s running mate — or someone else’s — if in fact he wins the nomination. No reason for her to jump now and agree to be his talisman against criticism of the 1994 crime bill and how Anita Hill’s testimony against Clarence Thomas was handled.

Biden’s up eight points over Bernie Sanders in today’s new Fox News poll, 31/23. If I’m not mistaken he’s led every survey of the race thus far. Is that meaningful or not? A Democratic strategist who spoke to Vanity Fair thinks it’s all smoke and mirrors, with Biden destined to fade as the lesser-known candidates in the race become more familiar to voters:

“Biden is polling as the front-runner right now, but there’s no intensity there. And he has nowhere to go but down,” a strategist for one of the Democratic contenders says. “There were these mirages in early polling that doomed Hillary both times, and it was a function of a similar dynamic, where you’ve got broad, deep name I.D. Every backward-looking Democratic nominee, one who’s been a vice president in the previous administration or played a major role—Hillary, Gore, Mondale—all failed. And Democrats have always succeeded when it’s been a fresh face and somebody who hasn’t spent a ton of time in Washington. That’s consistent with the research we’ve done internally this time: ‘Do you want someone older, or someone new?’ People overwhelmingly want someone new. To me, A.O.C. represents so much of what is going to be challenging for Biden. She’s speaking to people, saying, ‘Yeah, I’m fucking sofa-surfing as a member of Congress. That’s how people live.’ Biden is not exactly matching that moment.”

All of that logic (except the bit about intensity) applies to Sanders too, though. Hence Abrams toying with the idea of running herself: If the two old guys who are momentarily on top of the polls are overvalued, why not roll the dice and run for president herself?

Here’s CNN executing the soon-to-be very familiar Biden three-step last night. Step one: Biden strains to ingratiate himself to leftists, this time by complaining about “white man’s culture.” Step two: Instead of accepting his pander, Joan Walsh smacks him upside the head with it by arguing that the best thing he could do to end “white man’s culture” in politics is not run. Step three: You and I drink it in.