Last week, Joe Biden was in Massachusetts supporting the strikers against Stop and Shop management. He gave a speech citing how much money company ownership was taking out of the business while trying to cut wages and benefits for their employees. He said, “This is wrong. This is morally wrong, what’s going on around this country. And I have had enough of it. I’m sick of it, and so are you.”

And there’s no question in my mind that he meant it. Biden has always had strong connections to working class America, unions, and the principles of fairness that Democrats have historically stood on. He has exactly the kind of Bona Fides the Democrats will need in 2020 to win crucial industrial states like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He could do it. He could beat Trump.

He could do it, that is, if we weren’t living in the Age of Twitter, where childish epithets, bullying, and “alternative facts” are more important than ideology, experience, and integrity.  And in the age of news-for-profit, where prurient click-bait has superseded actual news.

In the current environment, no Democrat, no matter how well qualified, can beat the Schoolyard-Name-Caller-In-Chief, and his official propaganda arm, FoxNews. What makes me so sure? Well, a headline story on the New York Times web page today, the first day of Biden’s official entry into the 2020 presidential race, was:

Joe Biden Expresses Regret to Anita Hill, but She Says ‘I’m Sorry’ Is Not Enough

See, about thirty years ago, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee that questioned Anita Hill on her testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and Biden didn’t do enough, according to Hill, to find witnesses that would corroborate her version of events.

This, not Biden’s support of the striking workers, or a million other issues more important in the fight to present a viable alternative to Trump, is what we must talk about today, and Biden is already on the defensive. He’s joined the circular firing squad of Democrats who will spend the next 18 months apologizing and explaining all their many and varied transgressions against the classes, individuals and institutions that are oh-so-important to the hordes of aggrieved victims that are potential Democratic voters.

The obsessions that will doom the Democrats once more: identity politics, grievance politics, and political correctness.

All that remains now to ensure a Tweety landslide is another run by Jill Stein.

What’s to be done? Well, it’s tempting to try to play Trump’s game better than he does. Every time he refers to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas”, she could say something like he would – “Who said that? Donald who? You mean Pinocchio?” Every time Trump calls someone like Tex Alles a name like “Dumbo”, the headline in the Failing New York Times should be something like “Tiny-handed, Bald, Comb-over Clown Calls Someone a Name”.

Tempting, for sure. Thing is, it’s been tried and it doesn’t work. When you get down in the mud with a pig, you both get dirty but the pig enjoys it.

No, another strategy is called for. Here’s my idea. Whenever a Democratic candidate is asked about some 60-year-old woman who has recently come forward to say that she was made to feel uncomfortable that time when the candidate “accidentally” brushed up against her in the lunch line in seventh grade and is now demanding an apology, the candidate should recite the following:

“I have done many foolish and regrettable things in my life. Like most of us, I guess. I owe many people apologies for my past transgressions, and I intend to honor my obligations by hearing out each of them, and sincerely apologizing in every case where an apology is called for. And I know there will be many. I will start to do this on the day after the election and finish when the grievance of every last person has been heard.

And now, here is what I intend to do to restore America’s place in the international community, to combat climate change, to deal with totalitarian regimes across the globe, to fight terrorism, to raise the wages of the American workers, to rebuild our infrastructure, and to restore the balance of powers and institutions of government that the current President has done so much to destroy.”

What do you think? Will it work?