Among the 63 abandoned posts listed under “drafts” in my WordPress blog account is a 1,480-word bear of a thing that I knocked out a couple weeks ago. It is — or was, I guess, or maybe more accurately, never will be — on the upcoming election.

That drafts tab, let me point out, is a little sad to look at sometimes. Depressing, really. It’s filled with big ideas that didn’t pan out and small ones that never bloomed. A lot of self-indulgent, cringeworthy spillage, too, that probably deserves to be stuck in blog limbo. “Drafts” is, in its way, an Island of Misfit Blog Posts, all stranded there (probably forever) for reasons only I understand. And, truly, I don’t understand half of it.

But that grizzly election post … that one, I get. That one was destined for the Island almost from the start. I had an inkling, as I was tapping at it in a coffee shop, that it might not work out as I hoped it would, especially if things in the run-up to this presidential election turned terribly wrong. I just didn’t think things would go that wrong that quickly.

Then, Joe Biden went to a debate.

If you have the stomach to do such a thing, remember that before the debate back on June 27, everyone had a strong suspicion of what was to come; two old men sniping at each other, one bloviating and lying incessantly, the other stumbling incessantly (and lying, too … they’re politicians, for cripe’s sake), and neither of them — this was the point of the now-dead post — moving the needle of public opinion a smidgen. Each side would claim debate victory. The dread about the November election would build. And so, so many of us would just want to go into hibernation until 2025. Maybe 2045.

But Joe blew it. Blew it as badly as any politician ever has blown a debate. Richard Nixon sweating wildly on national TV? Rick Perry forgetting a federal agency he had vowed to chop? (Perry, famously during a 2011 debate, actually said, “Ooops.”) Gerald Ford confusing Eastern and Western Europe in a question about Soviet domination?

This was worse. Way worse. If Biden’s debate with Donald Trump had been a duel, Kamala Harris would be president right now. It absolutely, unequivocally, could not have been worse. I can’t see how anybody, ever, will do worse.

Biden’s halting, confused, incoherent, virtually unwatchable performance was so awful that wholly legitimate questions about his mental stability were being raised before the debate finished. Even people who, an hour before, strongly backed Biden were left stunned and defenseless.

That needle of public opinion? It moved. Noticeably.

And so that post that I wrote about how debates don’t change anything, noting that the election rematch few really wanted was coming our way anyway, was quickly snatched back, moments before it became published reality, like a wayward toddler headed toward traffic.

Off to the Island with it. Never to be heard from again. Except for this self-own, that is.

The truth is, I never wanted to write about this damn election in the first place. Who wants to read more about that? Who wants to write it? Hasn’t enough been written? Haven’t we all read enough? Don’t we all know, by this point, how we’re voting?

But as I said in my last post (the last published one), I have to write something. It’s history in the making. It’s a responsibility of sorts. It’s important. And now, after Joe has gone and blown everything up, it’s even more urgent to say something.

One of the perhaps strangest aspects of the post-debate coverage has been that the ripping on Biden has been, for the most part, admirably reserved. Many Democrats, of course, are even now denying it was that bad. And Republicans are sneaky smart. They’re not piling on. They’re letting Joe’s words, and his actions, do him in.

But the truth, right there for all of us to see, is undeniable. Biden is 81 years old. He’ll be 82 in November. If he were to be re-elected, he’d be 86 at the end of his second term. He looks every bit his age — stiff, slack-jawed sometimes, glassy-eyed — and by that very public display at the debate, he’s acting even older than that. There are rumors that he’s showing signs of Parkinson’s disease. They are entirely believable.

In the immediate aftermath of the debate, a few brave Democrats called for Biden to stop his reelection bid for the good of the country. But Biden is fiercely proud, intractably stubborn, and perhaps dangerously narcissistic when it comes to beating Trump again. Pardon me for repeating what I’m sure many others have said since the debate, but Biden insisting that he’s staying in the race is dead-on the story of your aging grandpa who doesn’t want to give up driving his mint-condition 1997 Cadillac despite failing reflexes and several run-ins with the curb out front and the neighbor’s garbage can.

The newly minted debate within the Democratic Party — What to do about Uncle Joe? — quickly simmered to the point where the question now is not just whether to take away his keys but about who to give them to, how to get the new driver into the Caddy, how to train them how to drive it, and most importantly, how to convince the family, and some sympathetic like-minded people, that this new driver is a good idea and maybe the only way to keep the Caddy from falling into the hands of someone who might well drive the thing into the ground if given another chance.

Wow. Talk about driving something into the ground.

Anyway, this whole thing is a sudden, unexpected wreck, a full-blown election crisis deep into a critically important election year.

Or … is it?

Is it, really? Does it have to be?

I’m convinced that the one aspect of this election that is true, and has been true for a long time, and may be more true now than ever, is that a whole chunk of voters simply wish that they had a different choice than the two guys now before them. Research clearly has shown that this rematch of 2020 was never appealing for a lot — a lot — of people. It wasn’t all that appealing of a showdown back then. According to the Pew Research Center, about 25 percent of the electorate doesn’t like either Trump or Biden.

Who? How? When? Will it make a difference come November?

Well, I have some thoughts. But that’s for another post. For now, I gotta wrap this up and hit publish before more hell breaks loose.