Dems prove to themselves and all of us, an inconvenient truth

How will Joe Biden survive the presidential debates now that his fellow Democratic opponents have fitted him for the white hood?

He won't.

And just days before the Democratic debate in Miami, with or without those cool aviator shades, old Biden looks really old.

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama could stand on either side of Biden on that debate stage and give him great big protective hugs to protect all that creamy Biden whiteness inside, and it still wouldn't help him.

He's toast, after he was tagged as being racially insensitive at best and an enabler of Dixiecrat segregationists at worst.

It's always his mouth that got him in trouble, but for years he was forgiven his racial gaffes and his creepiness — including getting all touchy feely and sniffing the hair of young women he didn't know. But then he was Obama's vice president and so was absolved.

But that's over now, and Obama doesn't seem to be sending any protective hugs Joe's way.

Biden's taken a pounding from Democratic politicians who are experts at playing the race card, but it's all well-deserved, since Biden has also shamelessly played that same race card on others.

Biden's sin is that he's an old white Democrat who just cracked up on the intersectional highway.

A few days ago at a fundraiser in New York, Biden spoke with nostalgia about his days in the Senate, working with Democratic segregationists such as Senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia and James Eastland of Mississippi. Both Democrats were vociferous opponents of integration and opposed civil rights protections for black Americans discriminated against in the Jim Crow South.

"I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland," Biden was quoted as saying, pool reporters noting that he slipped into a Southern accent. "He never called me ‘boy,' he always called me ‘son.' "

"Well guess what?" Biden added. "At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you're the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore."

Uh-oh.

It didn't take long for Senators Cory Booker, the Spartacus from New Jersey; and Kamala Harris of California to jump and kick his head in.

It was Biden's use of a down-home Southern drawl, and the weak joke about not being called ‘boy' by the Dixiecrat from Mississippi that was pounced on by Booker.

"You don't joke about calling black men ‘boys,' " Booker said.

On a CNN interview, Booker said: "This is what I know. … As a black man in America, I know the deeply harmful and hurtful usage of the word ‘boy' and how it was used to dehumanize and degrade."

He said Biden should apologize. Biden, playing tough, says he won't apologize.

"Apologize for what?" Biden said. "Cory should apologize. He knows better. There's not a racist bone in my body. I've been involved in civil rights my whole career. Period, period, period."

I would have liked it more if Biden demanded that Booker get a comment from T-Bone, Booker's make-believe friend from the mean streets of Newark who has faded from media memory.

It's exciting when Biden gets all indignant. But it's also exciting when he veers off using different accents — or at least talking about accents — before he blows his rhetorical feet off.

There was that time he expressed delight that Obama was "clean" and "articulate." And the time he announced that his state of Delaware was home to many immigrants from India.

"You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent. I'm not joking!"

And in 2012 he tried to brand Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a racist.

Biden stood before a predominately African American audience and took out his race card, and used that Southern drawl of his — perhaps it belonged to a caricature of a preacher or a cartoon character like Foghorn Leghorn — but either way Biden was playing a role.

"(Romney) said in the first hundred days, he's going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street.

"They're going to put y'all back in chains!" Biden said.

Biden used that Southern drawl to paint Romney as a racist — Mitt Romney! — and finally he used it one too many times and they jumped on him.

Is it deserved?

I almost don't want to answer this, since Biden has proven himself to be a race-monger, and there are all those woke scolds looking to weaponize everything everyone says or does.

Biden talked about civility of the past, when people who disliked and disagreed with each other could work together to get things done.

Segregationists were terrible. But even Obama spoke kindly of onetime KKK Exalted Cyclops, Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, at Byrd's funeral.

We did live in a country like that once.

We're coming up on a presidential year. And with the media firestorm and the angry rhetoric, Democrats prove to themselves and all of us, an inconvenient truth:

Civility has no home here.

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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.