Dems’ mugging of Biden sends clear debate message

In his opening statement at the Democratic debate in Detroit, Joe Biden addressed Donald Trump while pointing proudly to the racial and ethnic diversity of the nine Democrats standing beside him.

“Mr. President, this is America and we are strong and great because of this diversity, not in spite of it. ... We love it. We are here to stay. And we certainly are not going to leave it to you.”

Whereupon the other nine — three women, two African Americans, one Asian American and one Hispanic — began a multicultural mugging of Biden that at times took on the aspect of a flash mob.

Said The Washington Post, Biden “faced relentless attacks on his decades-long Senate record on race and criminal justice, immigration and health care, and his commitment to women’s rights.”

The 1994 crime bill, of which Sen. Biden was once proud and which cut U.S. crime rates for decades, was trashed as a reactionary and racist measure that led to the imprisonment of countless thousands of black Americans who were guilty only of minor drug offenses.

Cory Booker called Joe the “architect of mass incarceration.”

Biden’s Senate friendships with segregationists and opposition to busing to integrate the public schools came in for yet another hiding by Sen. Kamala Harris.

His support of President Barack Obama’s border policies that led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands seeking asylum and entry into the country was denounced as heartless.

Did he never object in the Obama Cabinet meetings to what was happening to these unfortunates being turned back, Biden was asked?

For two hours, when the Democratic candidates were not attacking each other, they piled on Joe.

Kirsten Gillibrand, a self-described “white woman of privilege,” attacked him for a longago op-ed that warned that working women imperil the family.

He was attacked anew by Harris for having supported the Hyde Amendment that denies federal funding for abortions

The GOP has a new library of videos of Democratic fratricide, and sororicide.

Bottom line of the July Democratic debates: It seems astonishing how far the Democratic Party’s center of gravity has moved left.

Today, much of the career record of Biden — his opposition to busing, his credentials as toughon-crime, his support for NAFTA, his backing of the Iraq War, his careerlong support of the Hyde Amendment — is seen not as a record to be ashamed of.

How do progressives, many of whom regard Biden’s career as an embarrassment, embrace him as their leader and agent of progressive change if he wins the nomination?

Biden today seems to be the kind of candidate, like Congressman Joe Crowley of Queens whom Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted in a primary, that progressives want to be done with.

After the July debates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren sit in the second and third positions, with one of the two the almost certain beneficiary of a Biden fade. Yet, if the Democratic Party nominates either, are the American people ready to buy into a socialist agenda?

Are Americans looking for an alternative to Trump who will abolish private health insurance, embrace open borders and offer free college tuition?

Where is the evidence of that?