The inexorable march toward keeping Biden out of debates, led by Dem talking heads, influencers, and strategists, should be a big story. They know he can't hold it together for an hour or two on his own, and they're engineering a series of excuses to shut them down. Big story.

Consider the logic. Biden has been largely sequestered away, his infrequent public events scripted, and his polling remains solid (i.e he's not losing anything by not campaigning). If you're running the campaign, what's your #1, 2, and 3 concern? Raw Biden. Biden unplugged...

...Unsupervised, unmanaged Biden - left to his own devices to go head to head on stage with only his prep and his thoughts to guide him. It is literally the worst possible thing Biden can do from a strategic standpoint. Participating in a debate could - and probably would - ...

...ruin his chances to become president. Not participating in a debate - citing any one of the trial balloon excuses being floated around by his advisors - will cost him 24 hours of mediocre press, if that. The media doesn't want Biden to debate - they'll pump life into any...

...excuse his team finally decides to use, because their nightmare scenario is an unmoored and incoherent Biden performance so glaringly disturbing they have no choice but to critique it. This is a big deal - watch for more prominent Dem voices calling for debate shutdown.