First, it was former Vice President Joe Biden. Now, it’s Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.

It's quite something, watching Democratic White House hopefuls struggle to say whether they think Vice President Mike Pence is a “decent guy.”

Bullock was asked this week by a reporter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for his opinion on the current vice president.

“Do you agree with the notion that Vice President Pence is a ‘decent guy’?” the reporter asked, referring to remarks Biden made last month at the Chuck Hagel Forum in Global Leadership at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

The potential 2020 candidate responded, “Well, I think that the vice president and I shared times as a governor. And that’s probably as much of the values that we share is just that time together, for sure.”

That’s not even a coherent English statement, let alone a coherent response. The reporter persisted, asking, “ So, is he a decent guy?”

Bullock said, “I don’t know — I don’t know how he is as a father, as a — I fundamentally disagree with the policies that he’s putting forward and the way he governs.”

What a profile in courage! He wasn’t asked if he supported Pence politically. Bullock wasn’t even asked if he approved of any Pence-backed policies. He was asked only whether he thinks Pence is a decent person. This was apparently too much to ask of Bullock.

I will say this for the governor: If he struggled to answer the question out of fear of upsetting the Democratic base, he's at least perceptive. The increasingly militant anti-Trump Left would eat the governor alive if he went anywhere near saying something nice about Pence. But just because Bullock is right about the base doesn't make it right. This is as bad as when Biden, who jumpstarted this entire “decent guy” story, was cowed last week into retracting some faint praise for the current vice president. During his address in Nebraska, 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.

This was just too much for the Democratic Party’s 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. “Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community.”

Biden chickened out, saying, “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.”

The hard-left’s fanatical hatred for the current administration, paired with the 2020 candidates’ willingness to tolerate it, guarantees the eventual Democratic nominee’s platform will include that President Trump is a reincarnated Adolf Hitler.

If you were wondering whether 2020 will be uglier than 2016, the answer is: Yes.