If David Axelrod said it, you know Barack Obama is thinking it.

And that is the thought to dump Joe Biden. Or, more precisely, to get the incredibly shrinking Joe Biden not to run for re-election.

The polls show that people believe he, among other things, is just too old for the job. Biden turns 81 on Nov. 20.

Joe Biden’s presidency is in many ways Barack Obama’s third term, and Biden has made a mess of it, despite surrounding himself with Obama holdovers.

Ever concerned about his legacy, Obama in 2020 never wanted Biden to run for president in the first place. “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,” Obama told Biden back then.

Obama did not endorse Biden in the primaries and only came aboard Biden’s candidacy after Biden had secured the nomination.

Obama also told intimates, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to (mess) things up.”

And Joe Biden has, which is why he is underwater in the polls. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong — the disastrous Afghan pullout, open borders, attacks on domestic energy, rising street crime, fentanyl killing Americans, inflation, national debt, high interest rates, soaring gas and grocery prices, Hunter Biden, Chinese payoffs, two wars and Islamic terrorist inspired attacks on American Jews.

So, it is understandable why Axelrod, speaking for Obama, would like to see Biden disappear, putting as much distance between Obama and Biden as possible.

Otherwise, Biden faces defeat at the hands of former President Donald Trump who, despite all his legal woes — or because of them — is surging in the polls. A defeat for Biden is a defeat for Obama. So, get lost, Joe.

Axelrod, a former top advisor to Obama for eight years when Obama was president and Biden vice president, said that while Biden has been “a great president,” his age may have caught up with him.

Axelrod, a Chicagoan like Obama, made his remarks upon the release of a New York Times/Siena College poll that showed Trump beating Biden in five of six battleground states that Biden must win to get re-elected.

The states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump bested Biden in all except Wisconsin, which showed Biden ahead by a mere two percentage points.

The poll showed that 71 percent of the registered voters believe that Biden “is just too old to be an effective president,’ while 62 percent said Biden did not have the “mental sharpness” to do the job effectively.

Axelrod said that while Biden has done things that will have generational impact, the issue was not political but actuarial.  “I mean there’s just a lot of concern about the age issue. And that is something that I think he needs to ponder.”

He noted that Obama was down in the polls when he sought reelection in 2011. But Obama was 50 years old, not 81.

Axelrod has a point. It is also right to point out that he would not be talking about Biden had he not been sanctioned or urged to do so by Obama. That is the way these things work.

Also, it is interesting to note that the Axelrod story broke while Obama issued a 1,130-word statement on the Israeli War in Gaza — acting as though he were still president — that sought to escape responsibility for the war by spreading the blame.

“Nobody’s hands are clean,” Obama said.

Especially his. It was Obama, like Biden after him, who propped up the Iranian Islamic terrorist regime by sending it billions of dollars for the release of U.S hostages, lifting sanctions and unfreezing billions more in assets to get the Iranians to the nuclear negotiating table. The Iranian mullahs responded by chanting “Death to America.”

Iran, the leading terrorist exporter in the world, used the money to arm Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and others.

That money was used by Hamas to train and arm the degenerate Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel Oct. 7 and brutally murdered 1,400 people, including babies, children, women and the elderly.

Among those murdered were 30 Americans. Instead of doing something about it, Biden and Obama look the other way as they do when thousands of antisemitic Americans openly demonstrate and praise Hamas for killing fellow Americans.

Is this America?

Boy, do we need a leader.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Former President Barack Obama can’t help his former VP now. (AP file photo)