Joe Biden may be an incompetent senile hack. Okay, he is an incompetent senile hack. But, like a dog, he is loyal. He knows that’s a basic rule of the game.

Proof of that is his current campaign to boot Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan off the early round of Dem primary contests, Iowa is actually a caucus, and put South Carolina in their place.

However, there is a catch. Nevada passed a law last year making it the first primary. It will be held on the first Tuesday in February of a presidential year. Bold move, Nevada.

“Nevada represents a diverse constituency that presidential candidates need to talk to. It is not just for us. It is for candidates to vet their issues and communicate with the kind of communities that they’re going to be asking to vote for them in the national presidential election,” Jason Frierson, the Nevada speaker of the House, said when the bill was signed by the governor. Nah. Nevada just wants to be kingmaker. And theoretically, Nevada could just keep making its Dem primary earlier to undercut any other state. Well now.

This Biden reelection gambit is a payback to Dem Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina who gave Biden a 2020 endorsement and put Joe’s faltering presidential campaign back online with a win in that state’s primary. It meant a lot, as Biden had serious 2020 primary problems.

In Iowa on February 3, Pete Buttigieg won with 26.2% of the vote; Bernie Sanders was second with 26.1%. Joe Biden placed fourth with only 15.8%.

Eight days later, in New Hampshire’s primary, Biden came in fifth, behind Sanders (25.6%), Buttigieg (24.3%), Klobuchar (19.7%) and Warren (9.2%).

Then Nevada held its caucuses on February 22. Biden grabbed second place, but with only 20.2% of the vote. Bernie Sanders ran away with it at 46.8%.

At that point the New York Times described Biden’s campaign as “fragile,” and opined that his “fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire Democratic primary… plunged his campaign further into peril and uncertainty, jeopardizing his fund-raising efforts and potentially upending his path to the nomination.” That all changed because of Jim Clyburn.

After his endorsement, Biden won 48.6% of the South Carolina Dem primary vote, mangling Bernie Sanders’ second place 19.8%. Clyburn delivered the black vote, a big Dem constituency in South Carolina, and that was that. So you can see the need for payback.

But this whole deal could backfire for the Dems, as Biden and his policies remain deeply unpopular. They could just be front loading the game for a guy who can be beaten. Dems realize Biden’s problems. That’s why they recently sent Obama to Georgia, not old Joe.

Dems are likely hoping that Republicans step on their own tail in the House over the next two years and Biden can run against that.

Well, in 1996 and and 2012 Dem presidents who got their clocks cleaned in their first midterms were comfortably reelected. Biden didn’t do all that badly in the recent midterms. So please GOP, for once, read the history and act accordingly. Don’t grab defeat out of the jaws of victory, again.