I’m a little worried. Judging by this Rudy Giuliani/New York Post/Hunter Biden fiasco I’m thinking our old pal Vladimir is losing his touch.

I mean, by now I was expecting something a lot more sinister and sophisticated than, you know, another e-mail scandal. People, it’s 2020! Where are the deep fake videos? You know, a slick 4k mash-up with Joe Biden sitting down in his favorite pizza joint in front of an 18″ wood-fired pie of chopped up baby parts and a side dish of Satanic hot sauce?

Instead Vlad wheels out … Rudy Giuliani? The fearsome Russian FSB doesn’t understand that Giuliani is Functioning Adult America’s idea of a sad, over played punchline? As in: truly everyone’s babbling, drunk uncle? As “October surprises” goes, this is just sad. Pathetic even.

It gets really bad when (Murdoch-owned) FoxNews won’t touch a story — presented for your inflammation — by the (Murdoch-owned) Post. Why? Was it the combination of Giuliani’s and Steve Bannon’s and Alex Jones’ fingerprints all over the thing? Or did they have enough inside-the-family intel to know that the guy who wrote the thing demanded his name be taken off it … and that the by-line that finally ran belonged a poor woman who had never before had anything printed in the Post … and only learned her name was attached after it was published? I mean, good lord people. We need better practices nefariousness. This is amateurish.

Now, I’m guessing Vlad is saving his best moves for election day. Namely, as I’ve said before, a series of “ballot irregularities” in key states that aligns with Bill Barr’s judicial philosophy like the gears of a fine luxury sedan. (I’m pleased to see that Team Biden is stashing away cash for the court fight(s) over that inevitability.)

Bad as the Post-Hunter Biden story is, it was predictably inhaled by the right-wing bubble culture. I don’t know why I was surprised. I guess it’s because at this point I was assuming that even they would require something a bit more elegant in their flagrant con jobs. But no. If there was ever any doubt how ill-informed and sealed-off from wider culture the Trump base is, the last semblance evaporated with their whole-hearted, childishly credulous embrace of a story with so many gaping lapses of plausibility. (Here’s the best item-by-item take down I’ve read.)

Pundits and mainstream media oracles are slapping themselves on the back for recognizing … all the red flares shooting off a pile of absurdist bullshit … when they saw it lying right there on the sidewalk in front of them. Good for them, I guess. It is an improvement from 2016’s “even-handed” pursuit of Hillary’s e-mail “scandal.”

Two weeks is always an eternity in a presidential election cycle, and with the combination of Valdimir/Trump/Barr still in the game we remain very much in a kind of super duper, double secret form of eternity.

But I can’t help but wonder what Putin is thinking over there in his sealed up dacha. His investment in Trump paid off with four years of chaos and corruption, and all the international disgrace Trump has brought down on the United States. So it goes without saying he’d like a longer run. More of the same. The complete ruination of NATO for example … and on and on. But did Vlad factor in the full incompetence of Trump? The transparent buffoonery of Rudy Giuliani and the ineptitude of Republican politicians like Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, charged with … making something out of all the drunk uncle theories? I’m thinking, “no.” Being diabolical, Putin would have a hard time imagining such an broad cross-section of idiots.

So, eager as modern Republicans are to play his game, Vlad is going to have to come up with something more clever — by far — than the stale re-run he got out of Rudy and the Post.