Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker: When You've Lost Stephanopoulos...

What happens when some random New Yorker sees ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos and starts up the video camera on his phone before asking Stephanopoulos if he thinks Biden should step down?

You... get... the... truth?

It was not easy to type those four little words, believe me.

Anyway, whoever the passerby was sent his video to TMZ so it could go global because that's how these things work.

The New York rando asked, "Do you think Biden should step down? You’ve talked to him more than anybody else has lately," and Stephanopoulos replied without hesitation, "I don’t think he can serve four more years."

This is where I must briefly pause the story to remind you that Stephanopoulos got his start as Bill Clinton's press henchman, suppressing "bimbo eruptions" and anything else the Clintons needed to get ahead — and stay there. He's remained a loyal Dem hack for more than 20 years at ABC "News." You have to wonder if Wednesday's moment of truth-telling was meant to open the door a bit for Hillary.

Anyway, here's the clip. Excuse the lousy quality, but it seems like the rando guy was trying to keep his smartphone out of view.

That moment of honesty and clarity was so genuine that I'm going to take back two out of the last three mean things I wrote about Stephanopoulos — or would if I cared enough about him to look them up.

Previously on the Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker: Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt

To his credit (?), Stephanopoulos managed to perform a little CYA without actually backtracking. "Earlier today I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn’t have," he told Dylan Byers through his spokesperson. ABC News told Byers, "George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News."

The delicious part is that this happened the same day everyone finally started to admit there’s no ditching Biden:

One House Democrat who is "deeply skeptical of Biden" told Axios that members of their party were "folding all over the place" and "becoming resigned to Biden holding all the cards here, and us having no real say in the matter."

"I'm still on the side that believes that Biden will see it through to the bitter end," I wrote in the very first Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker on July 3, when many people seemed to think that Biden's LBJ moment was just moments away.

My friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser and I hashed this one out for our Five O'Clock Somewhere VIP Gold family during Biden's first year in office — when there was talk of his stepping aside for Harris after two years — and we concluded two things:

1. Biden isn't going anywhere.
2. Neither is Kamala Harris.

You're welcome.

The issue isn't whether desperate Democrats can push Biden aside because they can't — not so long as DOCTOR Jill Biden remains dug in. "If the power brokers in the Democratic National Committee really did think that Joe Biden would relinquish power and not run for a second term," Kruiser wrote in today's Morning Briefing, "they were obviously overlooking his wife."

But that doesn't mean that the Biden campaign isn't in collapse because, as even George Stephanopoulos is willing to admit to some rando on the sidewalk, it is.