Democrats have entered the hand-wringing phase of the election season, fretting about Joe Biden and poised to leap from their windows. I’ve been around this game long enough to tell you that this happens every time with every nominee. Everyone needs to chill. We’re all stuck at home anyway, so there’s no reason not to.

Assuming that the November balloting takes place (it’s mandated in the Constitution, if that’s any solace), I foresee six reasons why Uncle Joe is likely to oust the worst excuse for a human being to ever fail upward:

This election is a referendum on Trump. His predictably disastrous botching of the pandemic has made it so, and the verdict is already in. According to the latest CBS News poll, 71 percent of Americans say he was ill-prepared to handle the virus outbreak; the latest Yahoo/YouGov poll says it’s 63 percent thumbs-down, 22 percent up. Ask yourself whether those numbers will flip as the needless deaths continue to mount. By the time this pandemic wanes, Trump, by dint of his serial incompetence, will have presided over the highest civilian American death toll in history (exceeding the Civil War’s 50,000). Try running for re-election on that record. And did I mention that he can no longer claim credit for a robust economy?

Government experience – and respect for governance – take precedence. In 2016, a fatal share of voters, fed up with the Clintons, took a flyer on an “outsider” who’d never served a day in any elective office. How’s that working out? If nothing else, this pandemic has likely (I stress likely) taught a sufficient number of naifs that in matters of life and death, it’s really better to be governed by feds who know what they’re doing – as opposed to a “president” who can’t run a lemonade stand. Joe Biden may not be exciting, and he may not pack the rafters (in 2020 there are no rafters anyway), but that doesn’t matter, not this year. Competence and substance matter. Biden has already assembled a smart cadre of public health advisers to guide his response to the pandemic. Back on March 12, he released a comprehensive pandemic fight plan; today, he shared his thoughts about how and when to reopen America. Granted, all his moves thus far have garnered insufficient attention – the media is currently mesmerized by Trump’s daily propaganda show – but it’s early yet. The out-party nominee will get his say, and will draw the competence contrast, when the battle is fully joined.

The empathy chasm. The current White House occupant celebrates the mounting death toll by toasting his “ratings” and boasting that he’s number one on Facebook. His challenger has suffered grievous losses in his personal life (a wife, a daughter, a son); he bares and shares his pain in the presence of those who have suffered similar loss. Timing is everything, in politics as in life. Uncle Joe’s ministrations will resonate in this year of tragedy.

The health care issue. Remember why Trump and the Republicans were drowned in the House blue wave of 2018? And why they lost the national popular vote margin by nearly 9 percent? Because their relentless attempts to cripple or kill Obamacare triggered a huge backlash, even in normally Republican-leaning suburban districts. Now we have a pandemic, and people are losing their health coverage. Trump’s longstanding hostility to Obamacare looks even worse. Biden’s reluctance to endorse full government health care will tick off some Bernie Bros, but his defense of Obamacare, and his support for a public option, will be more than enough to draw a favorable contrast with Trump.

Goodbye to the “socialist” bogeyman. Trump and the GOP yearned to run against Bernie in order to conjure the evils of socialism. But not only have they been denied Bernie, they’ve lost that phony issue as well. How can they scream about socialism when a pandemic is compelling Republicans to spend trillions of government dollars? There’s an old joke that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. This year, a liberal is a conservative who needs a handout.

Some historical perspective, please. I’ll conclude the way I began: Democrats always freak out about their nominee. They need to get a grip. I covered the 2008 Democratic Convention, and I remember that people were worried that Barack Obama would lose the race. Based on the worriers I interviewed, here’s what I wrote: “Millions of Americans still view the guy as a stranger. And they’re not necessarily wild about entrusting the White House to a stranger – especially one who has been defined by Republicans as a silver-tongued celebrity with insufficient government seasoning…He’s stuck with a thin résumé…He needs to signal that as president he would be buttressed by a seasoned team of policy players.” (Obama wound up winning the biggest Democratic majority since LBJ in 1964.)

And in April 1992, lest we forget, presumptive nominee Bill Clinton was running third in the polls – behind incumbent George Bush and nutty Ross Perot. I was covering that race as well, and that month I described Clinton as “the laggard runner in a three-man marathon, a leaky vessel that had dropped anchor in the Bermuda Triangle.” (Clinton went on to become the first Democrat since FDR to win two elections.)

So skip the woe for Uncle Joe. Trump got himself impeached for trying to smear his foe at the starting gate. Just ask yourself why he tried.