With everyone from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and the Rev. Al Sharpton, to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), to center-left pundits and longtime Democratic activists, to former Obama administration officials such as former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. expressing exasperation at the political judgment shown in savaging a former president who claimed a more than 90 percent approval rating among Democrats, candidates got the message.

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The Hill reported: “[Sen. Cory] Booker softened his criticism of Obama on Thursday saying he wouldn’t be in the race if Obama was running for a third term. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) separately told reporters on Thursday that she had ‘nothing but praise for President Obama.’ ” (Her press secretary had to play defense on CNN.)

By Thursday evening, Julián Castro, among the most vituperative critics of Obama’s immigration policies on Wednesday night, was running from the invitation to attack Obama-era policies, as my Post colleague Greg Sargent noted.

The issue was not simply that certain progressive presidential candidates want to take the party further to the left. Rather, in painting the Affordable Care Act as an utter flop and its principle defenders as mouthpieces of the far right, these candidates lost track of the real target (President Trump) and cast the uber-popular former president as a failure. How was that going to play in a party where Obama’s approval is more than 90 percent?

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Moreover, in a race in which voters have made it crystal clear they don’t want to see infighting and, instead, want to prioritize beating Trump, the progressives’ performances struck one as akin to a snooty playwright who wants praise from critics (or in this case, Twitter) and doesn’t much care if the ticket-paying audience is dumbfounded or even offended.

The progressive candidates wound up pleasing no one. Their sheepish reactions to Obama’s defenders and their subsequent scrambles to get back in the good graces of Obama supporters made them look weak and made their prior night’s attacks look insincere. Meanwhile, their willingness to slam Obama’s legacy may stick in the craw of his legions of supporters.

By colleague Eugene Scott dryly suggested, “Perhaps those competing for the Democratic nomination will be more thoughtful in how they critique the Obama administration moving forward. They don’t want to risk more voters moved to support President Trump’s long-term goal of dismantling the Obama legacy.”

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This shouldn’t be that hard. They could, after all, attack Trump for dismantling the Obama legacy and then argue that their own, more radical proposals are superior to the plans offered by moderates. That sort of nuance has escaped many of them so far as they’ve searched for ways to knock Biden out of the lead. They aren’t going to get there by impugning the character and family values of Biden (as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tried) or by painting the administration that put the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into effect as draconian deporters. They aren’t going to get there by deriding legitimate arguments about the efficacy of their ideas as “Republican talking points.”

Perhaps, off the debate stage until Sept. 12, the ill-feelings and misplaced arguments generated over that last couple of days will fade in memory. Candidates will return to their largely positive stump speeches. Harris can go back to “prosecuting the case” against Trump. The more than dozen candidates who haven’t qualified for the September debate can focus on their political survival.

And Biden? He’s just gotten a full 24 hours of sympathetic coverage reminding Democrats how much they love Obama, the man Biden served alongside for eight years. No wonder the former vice president seemed almost gleeful on Thursday.