If you thought the 2016 U.S. presidential election was ugly, you haven’t seen anything yet. If an interaction this week between former Vice President Joe Biden and actress Cynthia Nixon serves as an indicator, the upcoming 2020 election is going to be far nastier, personal, and vicious.

Biden, who’s reportedly mulling yet another White House bid, spoke Thursday at the Chuck Hagel Forum in Global Leadership at the University of Nebraska Omaha. During his address, Biden touched on the international community’s reaction to Pence’s speech this year at the Munich Security Conference.

"The fact of the matter is it was followed on by a guy who's a decent guy, our vice president, who stood before this group of allies and leaders and said, 'I'm here on behalf of President Trump,' and there was dead silence. Dead silence," Biden said.

Now he has gone and done it. He referred to Pence, the commander of the Republic of Gilead, as a “decent guy.” This proved a bridge too far for the Democratic Party’s more left-wing elements.

“[Y]ou’ve just called America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader ‘a decent guy,’” actress, LGBT activist, and failed New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon tweeted Thursday to her more than 240,000 followers. “Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community.”



.@JoeBiden you’ve just called America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader “a decent guy.”



Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community. @DrBiden https://t.co/Cw2beknTj7 — Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) February 28, 2019



Hilariously enough, Nixon, who is herself gay, included Jill Biden’s Twitter handle in her scolding tweet to the former vice president. In other words, Nixon tattled on Joe Biden to his wife, which is probably the funniest detail in this entire story.

Biden not only responded to Nixon, but he also walked back his faint praise for Pence.



You’re right, Cynthia. I was making a point in a foreign policy context, that under normal circumstances a Vice President wouldn’t be given a silent reaction on the world stage.



But there is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the Vice President. — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 28, 2019



“You’re right, Cynthia. I was making a point in a foreign policy context, that under normal circumstances a Vice President wouldn’t be given a silent reaction on the world stage. But there is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the Vice President,” he tweeted.

This is where we are now. Biden, who did more than anyone else to push the Democratic Party toward its very recent (in the last decade!) embrace of same-sex marriage, is being scolded by left-wing activists for having the temerity to refer to the sitting vice president as a “decent guy.” Biden didn’t say he supported Pence. He didn’t say he approved of Pence’s policies. He said merely that the current vice president is an okay dude.

For that, Biden is being pilloried by Democratic activists.

At this rate, I imagine the eventual 2020 Democratic nominee will have no choice but to run on a platform that argues President Trump and company are literal Hitlers. Won't that be fun!

As for Biden, well, for the sake of his own party he shouldn’t even bother running in 2020, if that’s indeed what he’s thinking of doing. If he gets in the race, he’ll likely spend most of his time explaining “past positions and statements that are out of sync with the current party. He'll also need to answer for his willingness to get along with politicians on the other side," as my Washington Examiner colleague Philip Klein argued this morning.

In other words, the entirety of the former vice president's participation in the Democratic primary will most likely be him answering for his past un-wokeness, which would be a major waste of energy and effort considering it's time spent not focusing on defeating the Republican Party — you know, the actual team Democrats want to beat.