Remember the Maytag repairman?
He was the gentleman - portrayed by actor Jesse White - who was said to be the "loneliest guy in town" in commercials for the appliance manufacturer from 1967 to 1989 because Maytag products were so good that they almost never required his services.
If former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president, as is becoming increasingly likely, he would become the new "loneliest guy in town" - in Washington, D.C., that is.
Here are 10 reasons why:
* Biden would assume office with no mandate, winning one of the closest elections in history, coming in with no coattails and failing to achieve the landslide the media and pundits breathlessly said he would score.
* Biden would enter with a Republican Senate and a diminished Democratic House. Gone would be any dreams of ending the Senate filibuster, of court-packing, of the Green New Deal, of total government-run health care, of the end of the Electoral College, of statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, of the banishment of student loans, and of slave reparations, just to name a few of the plans radical Democrats had for a Biden administration should Democrats have won the presidency and the Senate.
* Biden would arrive in the midst of a huge rift in his party between what passes for moderate Democrats (like he was in the Senate and like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is said to be) and radicals like Biden's vice presidential selection, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and like shallow, vocal U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York. The radicals believe the moderates were to have delivered a Democratic Senate and larger Democratic House in the election, so the fact that they didn't will ratchet up the pressure on the 80-year-old Pelosi and on feckless Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who will be 70 later this month.
* Biden would become the oldest president in U.S. history, turning 78 later this month and already displaying natural signs of aging with memory lapses, garbled speech and verbal gaffes. He has spoken on occasion of serving only one term and at other times of being "a transitional president" (as in between Trump and another Democrat). So, in essence, he would be a lame duck on Inauguration Day.
* Biden would risk being a prisoner in his own administration. His running mate, Harris, recently was tabbed as the most liberal senator in the upper chamber, is more politically aligned with the radical wing of the Democratic Party and is 22 years his junior. She's also been termed ruthlessly ambitious and during the campaign referred several times to actions a "Harris-Biden" administration would take. Whether Biden could resist being swept aside by Harris and the radical wing of his party is questionable.
* Biden would no longer be able to count on the exclusive backing of ideological groups that traditionally have backed Democrats. In the election, according to exit polls, President Donald Trump picked up 6% more of the Jewish vote than he won in 2016, did better with all women than he did four years ago, and earned 4% more of the Black vote and 3% more of the Hispanic vote than he did in 2016. More significantly, another exit poll showed a majority of the votes for Biden - 54% - were cast against Trump and not for the former vice president.
* Biden would be viewed skeptically, as the first post-Trump president, by at least half of the American people, who no longer can count on a national media to be straight with them and to not take sides. If Trump did one thing during his term, he exposed the media for their overt and implicit bias toward the political left.
* Biden would be dogged, perhaps from the first days of his administration, by his past. Still hanging over his head are reports to come on the extent to which the Obama administration took action to thwart the incoming Trump administration in late 2016 and early 2017, and a potential investigation by the Republican Senate on how, or if, the Biden family profited from Biden's tenure as vice president. A special counsel already has been suggested by some, and such an investigation has the potential to damage the administration as did the Mueller investigation during Trump's first two-plus years in office.
* Biden would no longer have former President Barack Obama as his front man. As vice president, his gaffes, his unwanted touching of women and his business dealings could be brushed off. They would be in the spotlight if he becomes president.
* Biden would be following a president who got things accomplished, from a roaring economy to rebuilding the military to peace deals in the Middle East. As a man who got little accomplished in a 47-year career in Washington, Biden would indeed begin to look a little lonely - like he'd been washed over by a phantom blue wave.