The consensus message is still good, but Joe Biden’s You’re-Stuck-With-Me Tour is already getting a bit tiresome.

Biden’s poll numbers remain strong. His hopes rely on “pundit voting,” which means people will make a calculated vote for the candidate they think most likely to defeat Donald Trump, and not necessarily who they like most.

Pundit voting requires voters to trust the polls and pundits, rather than their own hearts and minds. Given the urgency Democrats place in ousting Trump, it’s understandable and even logical. It’s also uninspiring and cynical, as it forfeits leadership for the presumption of safe passage.

Confronting this obstacle is Elizabeth Warren, whose very liberal platforms have been decried as socialism. Call them what you want, but say this for Warren: she has platforms, she has policy ideas, and she has plans for the future. None of this is coming from Biden, whose message rotates back to how he worked with southern senators decades ago, how he supported gay marriage before it was fashionable, and how he watched Barack Obama craft Obamacare.

In just the past two weeks, Warren has offered detailed proposals for gun restrictions and Native American rights. Her vision will inspire half the country and infuriate the other half, but there is no question she has a vision of what’s coming up for America, not what’s been.

As for Biden, even his wife is campaigning that a vote for any Democrat but Joe is a vote for Trump. Warren’s husband, Bruce Mann, is helping his spouse more by staying in the background than Mrs. Biden is doing by taking the microphone.

"Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care, than Joe is, but you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election,” Jill Biden told a crowd in Nashua, N.H. “And maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘Okay, I personally like so and so better,’ but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.”

Wow, now there’s a message to make the heart soar for America’s future. Too bad Mount Rushmore is limited to four.

Team Biden is not alone. “I think (Warren) is terrific, but my questions about her are, can she get elected with the negativity, with all the stuff that’s thrown at her? Usually in the primary, I vote for whoever I like the most, but this one, I will put in electability,” a New Hampshire male carpenter said.

“They (American voters) are just not ready yet. It’s getting worse because we’re getting permission to behave this way from the top (with Trump)," said a woman voter who thought Warren’s gender would doom her.

The woman thought Warren would make a “wonderful” vice-president. To this thinking, the prejudice encouraged by Trump is wrong - so the solution is to vote with prejudice against a woman because “we’re not ready," then throw her a bone as vice-president, the political version of the Witness Protection Program.

“If it were completely up to me, I’d vote for her,” another woman said. Huh? It IS completely up to you.

Strategists for Biden’s opponents point out the fallacy of the “can’t-win” argument. When Bill Clinton and Barack Obama began their campaigns, the pundits hardly expected them to win. And there’s never been a better example than Donald Trump.

Biden continues a strategy of soft blackmail, telling his own party it’s either him or the end of America. Gender bias may well be working against Warren, but if so, the way for voters to end it is not to find an excuse to practice it.

Warren is 70, only six years younger than Biden, but there’s an indisputable vitality to Warren’s campaign that is missing when Biden gazes backward to his days in the Senate or, for that matter, as vice-president.

Should he highlight his experience? Absolutely. But Biden’s tone-deafness to modern passions runs in stark contrast to Warren, who connects with audiences in ways far removed from Biden’s campaign as a man you have to support, even if you have to bite down and swallow hard.

The non-Biden Democratic camps insist it’s the candidates with enthusiasm behind them who win. Trump is the best example, albeit a bitter one for Democrats to admit. And a few recent polls say other Democrats, including Warren, could beat Trump in a close race.

Of course, if polls were so reliable, Hillary Clinton would be the president today. Biden’s strategy also places him in questionable company because Trump’s support comes from fear - fear of Democrats, liberals, socialists, foreigners, you name it. Biden’s support also comes from fear - in this case, fear of Trump.

While Warren is laying out specific programs to tell voters why they should elect her, Biden is warning them only of dire consequences if they don’t elect him. Only one is showing a clear vision for the future, and to many people, that’s leadership, even if that vision makes centrist voters nervous and right-wingers angry.

Biden’s hopes rest on pundit voting. Warren is counting on citizens to vote from the heart, and not on advice from pundits who speak authoritatively about the odds, but who are frequently wrong.