There’s just one word for it: the Biden Boys. Or two words. Three, if you include the “the.” My personal experience with them has been nothing short of a nightmare. My mailbox, my physical mailbox, as we speak, is full of typewritten letters that call me a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.” Every time I try to engage on the issues, someone challenges me — in aggressive terms — to a push-up contest. Do these people speak for you, Joe Biden?

I want to be able to critique my candidate without being told, “C’mon, man!”

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This could just be me, but I think it speaks volumes. I think these ardent Bidenites have to ask themselves if this is really the foot they want to put forward — filling my mentions with drawings of the state of Delaware looking angry and sending me envelopes filled with Carter’s Little Liver Pills. I truly don’t know what these are, and I don’t feel welcome!

I know that other people online have had very different experiences than I have had and yet are still managing to align with candidates whose supporters have not exactly rolled out a welcome mat for them. Bully for them! But someone spat the word “malarkey” in a cutting tone in my voicemail inbox, and now as a consequence, I have reevaluated all my positions on everything and — maybe I’m a socialist, actually! I’m as surprised as anyone. Think about that before you drop another commuter train emoji in my mentions.

I think we have to wonder what motivates this kind of behavior. Something makes these people comment, “Do you even KNOW Barack Obama?” on all my social media posts. Something makes these barbershop quartets form outside my apartment window and complain in close harmony that I must want insurance companies to die. It just seems counterproductive for the movement, and I also wonder where they find the time to rehearse. But what does it say that I can’t be even mildly critical of Joe without receiving several irate faxes from people who think I won’t even be able to have dates after I’m 30?

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I think this kind of rot spreads from the top. You see a candidate who not only doesn’t disavow these Malarkey Men but who himself calls people “a horse’s ass” and replies to their critiques with, “Don’t tell me that, pal, or I’m going to go outside with you, man.” So much for civility! Keep this up, and I might discover I’m a Republican!

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