Over recent days, the mailbox has contained two distressing envelopes.

One was our annual residential property tax bill. Yikes. The political temperature in many parts of the state is about to get markedly hotter.

The other was my ballot for the upcoming presidential primary election on March 5th. As an unaffiliated voter of long standing, I received both the red-topped Republican ballot and the blue-bannered Democratic slate.

Sorry about that, Dave Williams and other exclusionists, but Colorado voters dictated that those registered as unaffiliated, nearly 48 percent of the state’s electorate, have the ability to participate in this process.

The GOP ballot still contains the names of Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy, all of whom long ago departed the race. Since the state Republican Party controls such ballot access as a pay-to-play operation, all their checks must have cleared.

On the Democratic side, perhaps some attentive readers will have noticed a presidential wannabe named Jason Michael Palmer, Gabriel Cornejo, Frankie Lozada or Stephen Lyons on the side of a milk carton.

Colorado will be joined by 14 other states in Super Tuesday voting. American Samoa will take part in the fun as well. Would my publisher like to send me there to report ever so earnestly from the front lines of surf and sand?

Of course, this process is largely moot today and is likely to be totally decided by the time March 5th rolls around. By then, Nikki Haley is near certain to have been routed by the Trump forces in her native South Carolina and a few days later in Michigan.

In a time of significant unrest in a volatile world, barring some unforeseen event or off-ramp, we seem destined for a stale rematch between two warhorses well past their sell-by date.

In Joe Biden and Donald Trump, America is about to live through an encounter between the two oldest, major-party candidates ever to seek the presidency since, wait for it, the same two faced off in 2020, each then four years younger.

By the time Ronald Reagan departed office after his eight years, he was a full four years younger than Joe Biden will be on inauguration day if sworn in for a second term. Moreover, Reagan at the end of his tenure, was the same age as Trump would be next January.

It was not that many years after he left the White House that Reagan announced, with customary grace, his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Many historians now believe that Reagan was suffering from the early effects of this cruel disease in his later years in office.

This issue of presidential age was brought again to center stage in the last couple of weeks with the release of the special counsel’s report regarding Biden’s handling of classified documents following his stint as vice president.

History will determine whether Robert Hur’s comments were a political cheap shot or just a harsh forewarning. In declining to file charges, Hur referred to Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Ouch. In political terms, Biden would have been better off with an indictment than with that characterization.

Those words are so damaging because they confirm a judgment that a large mass of voters, including more than a few Democrats, long ago reached. Before even getting to questions of ideology, voters want to have confidence in their chief executive’s core competency and capability.

Whatever many voters might lack in high intelligence or deep attentiveness, they make up for with intuition. Too many have reached the conclusion that Biden is only marginally up to the job at the moment and that a second term is a bridge too far.

Biden faces a catch-22 in that the only way to allay these concerns is via more unscripted exposure on his part. Yet, he is too often unable to rise to the occasion and his aides seem to have concluded that he needs to be kept in a tightly managed bubble.

He provided vivid examples of this dilemma over Super Bowl weekend in first doing a hurried news conference to denounce the special counsel’s report in over-animated terms. When that appeared wrapped up and everyone assumed he was leaving the podium, he grabbed the mike again to make news with respect to the war in Gaza, only to refer to Egyptian head Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the President of Mexico.

In that moment, denial of diminished capacity became confirmation of it.

Biden then demurred for the second year in a row when it came to the traditional presidential interview prior to the big game. For a skilled, confident politician, this is as close to a lay-up as you get in front of a vast audience. But Biden’s team found the risk too great.

Administration officials took to the airwaves en masse over the weekend, all speaking from the same talking points, to attest to the President’s strength and vigor. Though voters will always trust their own eyes rather than some mannequins sent out to tout the boss’s stamina.

From my distant vantage point, I regard Biden’s status as less that of senility than of frailty. But his decline is notable. It requires an act of faith to imagine him on top of presidential burdens for another full five years.

The real tragedy of a Trump-Biden rematch is that it involves two aged figures relitigating past issues when the country is crying out for someone to paint the way out of the morass toward a brighter future.

Trump’s entire message is centered on past grievances and settling old scores. A narcissist cannot think beyond himself, much less of a future of which he will not be a part.

Biden’s problems are not rooted in psychology. But does anyone expect him to offer insight to a world of artificial intelligence, vastly changed employment patterns, mass migration and new international alliances?

Trump has the fealty of his revamped Republican Party. Absent a cheeseburger-induced health crisis or possibly a criminal conviction, he will be the GOP nominee. Sad to say.

Biden’s hold on his party seems a bit more iffy and fragile. The reason more Democrats have not called for a passing of the torch sits down the hall in the person of Vice President Kamala Harris. In a party that worships at the altar of identity, to pass over Harris would be an affront to Black women, a most loyal constituency.

When you live by identity politics, sometimes you also die by them.

The chances are virtually nil of Biden stepping aside now and fomenting a six-month bloodletting within his party. But if he is still lagging come August and his age remains a deal-breaker for huge numbers of voters in advance of the Chicago convention, that would be the time for a high-drama exit.

The carnage would be intense as the party decides on a new nominee. But it would be limited to a few days on the convention floor. What a spectacle that would offer. And what a chance to put forward a fresh face versus Trump’s tired, angry visage.

One can only hope if Democratic rhetoric is to be believed as to the existential nature of the coming election.