I regularly speak with current and former high-level Democratic political operatives. To a person, they believe their own party to be leaderless, lost and out of touch with its own voter base.

They also believe that President Trump successfully poached a significant percentage of their formerly loyal base by actually addressing the bread-and-butter issues they found most troubling — something former Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), seemed to avoid like the plague.

For those paying attention, three issues emerged over the last four years that have shaken many Democrats to the core.

The first is that Joe Biden was apparently a “shadow president” for much of his administration, as various aides and allies went out of their way to hide the signs of his clearly diminished mind while also stage-managing him and parts of his presidency.

Next — as the Democrats work themselves through the five stages of presidential election grief — comes the acceptance that Harris was not only a bad candidate, but was never a good candidate and will never be a good candidate.

Last, we have the “adult in the room” Democrats taking a long hard look at the professional politician bench that is left after Harris’s embarrassing loss. They realize there is not one major-league hitter in the bunch.

Who is still on the bench from the 2020 spring training season? We have the likes of Sens.........

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