There may be a plot afoot that is more cynical than one we could ever imagine.

The Democratic establishment has now lined up behind former Vice President Joe Biden out of fear that a Bernie Sanders candidacy might destroy the Democratic Party for decades, as the George McGovern candidacy did years ago.

But there’s a problem: Joe Biden is old and getting older, and it shows. At a campaign rally in Texas the day before Super Tuesday he appeared to forget the words of the Declaration of Independence. He got as far as, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” but then stumbled. “All men and women created by— go— you know—you know the thing.” Yes, we know the thing, but apparently Joe Biden does not.

Glenn Greenwald writes in The Intercept that “prior to the New Hampshire primary, [Tim Ryan] the 9-term Congressman from Ohio and then-presidential-candidate not only made clear that he believes Biden is suffering from cognitive decline but also admitted that members of the Democratic Party establishment routinely discuss this in secret.”

Obviously, Biden will have to pick a vice presidential candidate one of these days (though perhaps not till the Democratic National Convention), raising the obvious question: who’s he going to pick? There are two categories of people: Democrats who campaigned for the nomination and weren’t accepted by the voters or — to put it differently — were rejected by the voters; and Democrats who didn’t campaign for the nomination. If Biden beats Donald Trump, that person, whoever he or she is, will become the vice president. Then what?

What if, by Inauguration Day, or shortly after that, it is finally admitted by the mainstream media and their ilk that Biden either always was senile or has become senile and can no longer fulfill the duties of the office to which he was elected? What time is it then?

It’s Twenty-Fifth Amendment time. The plot some of the Democrats talked about using to get Donald Trump out of office can be dusted off to remove President Biden. And given the state of Biden’s mental health, which by then will have worsened and will be apparent for all to see and acknowledge, who will be able to object?

And then the vice president will become president, and the country will have as president either someone who ran in the Democratic primaries and was rejected by most Democrats (and presumably would have been rejected by all Republicans), or a Democrat who didn’t run in the primaries, but who, in very short order, becomes president. Something’s wrong with this picture.

And what’s wrong, essentially, is that the new president will not really have been “duly” elected — because the Democrats who put up Biden (and whoever they selected as vice president for him) were really never running Biden at all. He was just a place holder, saving a spot for … whom? Kamala Harris, for example?

Harris’s website has a simple plan for guns:

If Congress fails to send comprehensive gun safety legislation to Harris’ desk within her first 100 days as president—including universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of the NRA’s corporate gun manufacturer and dealer immunity bill—she will take executive action to keep our kids and communities safe.

Bye-bye Second Amendment. Oh, you say, the Supreme Court will never allow that. Not so fast. Harris has another plan.

She has said that she is open to expanding the US Supreme Court, and she has accused Republicans of creating a “crisis of confidence” in the nation’s highest court.

“I am interested in having that conversation,” she said in Nashua, New Hampshire, answering a question about whether she favors adding as many as four seats to the court. “I’m open to this conversation about increasing the number of people on the United States Supreme Court.”

Yes, the Democrats would have to win a majority in the US Senate in order for that to happen, but the Republican majority is thin: it could easily happen.

Then what? Revolution? The 50 million gun owners in the US tend to own guns. That’s why they’re called “gun owners.”

Well, maybe it’s just a bad dream. But bad dreams, like fairy tales, can come true. It could happen to you.

Biden is obviously not up to the job of being president. You know that. The Democrats know that. And eventually a lot of voters will know the Democrats know that, and knew it all along. But they ran Old Joe anyway.

This will not end happily for the world’s greatest democracy.

Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.