Last month, a surreally bizarre trifecta of articles attempted to make the case for various alt-presidential tickets ahead of the 2024 election. On the face of it, none are particularly worthy of note except as objects of bemused derision: each advancing a highly improbable and transparently click-chasing future hypothetical. Tom Friedman’s self-parodying screed, for example, makes the case for a Joe Biden/Liz Cheney partnership, taking its inspiration from Israeli coalition politics. By way of response, Damon Linker suggests Biden should team up with Maryland Republican governor Larry Hogan to “marginally” improve Democratic electoral fortunes. (Linker, to be fair, does acknowledge that such a scenario is far-fetched.) Charging into the fray Leeroy Jenkins–style, one op-ed in the Wall Street Journal even pitched 2024 as the year for “change candidate” Hillary Rodham Clinton to mount her history-making big comeback.

Articles like these are roughly the punditry equivalent of a fantasy football draft: a vaguely amusing pastime with zero stakes, enjoyed mainly by people permanently OD’d on the news.

It’s probably no accident, however, that the genre has started to make a resurgence a year into an ossified administration that was effusively sold to liberal voters as an activist presidency in the making. As Biden’s approval ratings continue to tank, his legislative agenda stalls, and Democrats stare down the prospect of catastrophic defeat in next November’s midterms, the usual goldfish-brained chorus of pundits has grown increasingly vocal about the idea that blame lies with a White House too captured by progressive excess and removed from the reasonable “center” of mainstream opinion.