A slight breaking of the silence came in the New York Times after the GOP’s Iowa caucus. Not quite asked was the question: Isn’t Joe Biden throwing the country under a bus with his re-election strategy?

“To be clear, no one in President Biden’s White House would ever root for Donald J. Trump,” wrote the paper’s White House correspondent Peter Baker. “But as they watched Mr. Trump romp through Iowa, they also saw something else: a pathway to a second term.”
Ditto Peter Spiegel, the U.S. managing editor of Britain’s Financial Times, who wrote last week: “Holding up Trump as a threat to American democracy and then hoping he wins the Republican nomination is, even for those hardened pragmatists who populate the political classes, incredibly cynical.”

Mr. Biden first tried a non sequitur—because he beat Mr. Trump in 2020, only he could beat Mr. Trump in 2024. This fell apart as a matter of logic and soon as a matter of evidence, when polls started showing Mr. Trump beating Mr. Biden.

Mr. Trump at least can say there’s a clamor from part of the electorate for his candidacy, whereas the clamor for Mr. Biden comes from himself and his hangers-on. Mr. Trump finds a way to incorporate his conspicuous self-interest in his patter, saying his legal jeopardy is really an attack on his voters. Mr. Biden has no commensurate answer for his family’s buck-raking, except to semaphore a claim he can’t make openly about a problem he can’t admit exists: Hey, Trump is worse.

Mr. Trump can be expected also to intrude at least some discussion of the country’s problems and Mr. Biden’s handling of them, whereas Mr. Biden plans a campaign of Trump, Trump, Trump, implying any price (even a second Biden term and more Biden policies) is worth paying to keep Mr. Trump out of the White House.

This doesn’t mean Mr. Biden isn’t still a decent bet to win. That’s how unpopular and untrusted his opponent is. So, here we are, Democrats, if you like living dangerously; if you like making sport of the election; if you seek a possible cliff-hanger in the Electoral College or even a hung election in the House if enough disgruntled voters opt for a third party.

Almost any outcome is likely to be contested; norm violations will be rampant on both sides—Mr. Biden skipping the debates, his prosecutors trying to put Mr. Trump in jail, Mr. Trump using the courtroom as his campaign stump to delegitimize the legal system.

Mr. Trump might win solely because Mr. Biden is old and Kamala Harris is off-putting. All evidence points to a nose-holding race in which most Americans plan to be disappointed no matter who wins. If this sounds good to you, Democrats, congrats on your nominee. Who doesn’t enjoy going to midcourt once in a while to see if they can sink a 47-foot 3-pointer?

But it isn’t a service to the country. The Obama whisperer David Axelrod has desisted from his mid-November suggestion that Joe and Jill rethink a second-term run. I have yet to hear Mr. Axelrod or any other prominent Democrat of the Obama, Clinton or Biden circle suggest Mr. Biden is doing America a favor by running.

If Mr. Biden heeded the wishes of apparently 70% of voters, not only would he be freer now to take some steps vis-à-vis Iran and others that might be good for the country. Dominating the political news wouldn’t be Mr. Trump’s rout of a weakly contested GOP primary. It would be the thrilling battle of a fresh-faced generation of Democrats for the privilege of taking on the scandalized Mr. Trump and, in all likelihood, becoming the next president. In all likelihood too, partisan prosecutors might have weighed differently the prosecutions that have allowed Mr. Trump to steal center stage and set the country up for multiple constitutional crises attendant on perhaps nominating and electing a convicted felon.

Listen to Hunter Biden lately: Despite his flagrant influence peddling, tax dodging, drug abuse, gun mishandling and prostitute patronization, all recorded on his carelessly discarded laptop, Hunter isn’t the bane of his long-suffering, put-upon father. It’s Republicans for noticing Hunter’s behavior.

Like son, like father in the rationalization sweepstakes. It comes too late, but starting to crystallize in the press is the off-the-record question heard from senior Democrats over the past year: If Mr. Trump is such a danger to America, democracy and apple pie, shouldn’t Mr. Biden be heeding voters, stepping aside and opening the door to a new generation of Democrats—albeit not represented by Adam Schiff, of course—with some class and decency, who can put up a better show against Mr. Trump?