Even as Joe Biden gets put through the wringer, dogpiled from left and right for his much-documented handsiness, Donald Trump still fears the Scranton-born centrist circling the White House. On Thursday, he seemed to be enjoying Biden’s dilemma, sharing a doctored video depicting the former vice president touching his own shoulders. (“People got a kick out of it” he said.) But he appeared to lose his cool the following day, when Biden delivered a speech at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a Democratic-leaning union group, to great applause. “I’ve employed thousands of Electrical Workers,” he tweeted on Friday. “They will be voting for me!” The president didn’t explain what he was referring to, but the context for his insecurity was painfully clear.

Trump, after all, reportedly fears Biden more than any other candidate. White House aides have told Axios that the president worries Biden could flip Pennsylvania back into the Democratic column, and thereby win a general election, if the two run against each other. Some advisers have tried to assuage Trump’s anxieties, Politico reports, by assuring him that more progressive candidates, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will push Biden to the left, thus eroding his mainstream appeal. Even so, it’s hard to disguise the undercurrent of fear running through these conversations. Trump, who is obsessed with polling, surely knows that Biden currently beats him by nearly nine points in a head-to-head matchup. That number will surely go down when Biden formally enters the race, but it’s a formidable head start.

“I don’t see Joe Biden as a threat,” Trump insisted on the White House lawn Friday morning, in the surest sign yet that he does, indeed, see Biden as a threat. “I think he’s only a threat to himself. He’s been there a long time. His record’s not good. He’d have to run on the Obama failed record.” (Barack Obama left office with an approval rating of 60 percent. Trump, by contrast, has a disapproval rating of over 50 percent.)

Trump’s Biden-phobia is shared by Republican strategists, who told David M. Drucker for Vanity Fair in December that they’d much prefer Trump to run against Warren, Cory Booker, or Sanders, who they believe they could paint as far-left radicals. Biden, meanwhile, “wreaks calmness and normalcy,” one Republican strategist said, “which I feel like people crave over the chaos of the Trump administration.”

It’s still too early to rule on whether Biden’s habitual invasion of personal space will hobble his yet-to-be-announced presidential campaign. Biden, for one, is awkwardly trying to clean up this mess, releasing numerous explanations, while arguing that his intentions were pure. His appearance in front of a largely male crowd at the I.B.E.W. meeting, however, concerned women, particularly as he kept making jokes about how he had received “permission” to hug two people—giaving the impression that he treated the entire fracas as a joke. Outside the event, he told reporters that he would “have to change somewhat how I campaign,” but avoided a direct apology for making women uncomfortable.

“I’m not sorry for any of my intentions,” he added. “I’m not sorry for anything that I have ever done.” It appears he’s been taking some notes from Donald Trump.

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