A joke going around Democratic circles: What’s the difference between Joe Biden, Jesus Christ, and herpes? Joe Biden ain’t ever coming back.

Four nurses not in on that joke feverishly sought to resuscitate the ailing candidate on ABC several hours before the broadcast of General Hospital Thursday. Nurse Sunny warned that Republicans “play dirty,” announced that “I think Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself,” and assured her guest, “You are authentic.” Nurse Joy countered Biden assertions with “That’s right” and “That’s true.”

All seem perplexed that the recent impeachment inquiry derailed Biden rather than the president.

“People know me,” the fourth-place finisher in Iowa and fifth-place finisher in New Hampshire explained on The View. “They know who I am. They know that I have never been accused of doing anything indecent. I have not lied. I’ve been straight up. The bad news for me is I’m authentic.”

That inauthentic, lying, dog-faced, pony soldier of a conversation (never been accused of anything indecent!), in which nurses and patient obliquely referred to vague accusations against Biden without ever specifically delving into those allegations, does not Narcan the former front-runner back to life. The very hubris imagining the Establishment Media performing such magical feats put Biden in this back-of-the-pack position in the first place. Shortsighted, arrogant partisans actually believed they could launch an impeachment inquiry involving the president’s interest in the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine while completely avoiding the spectacle of the troubled Hunter Biden raking in as much every month from a corrupt Ukrainian oil company as the average American earns in a year as his father oversaw U.S. policy toward that country.

This politically unwise gambit never possessed a chance of removing the president. It did, predictably, harm the chances of Joe Biden, a candidate uniquely suited to wrest back some of those Rust Belt Democrats who cast Trump ballots in 2016, winning the nomination. Strangely, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and so many Joe Biden well-wishers overlooked this rather obvious result.

The same delusional arrogance that foresaw a blanket of immunity protecting Biden from impeachment fallout inspires Establishment Democrats to demonstratively undermine the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the very beneficiary of the Establishment’s massive misplay on impeachment. In 2016, CNN employee Donna Brazile fed candidate forum questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign at the expense of Sanders. Last month, CNN talking head Abby Phillip asked Sanders, “I want to be clear here. You’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?” He responded, “That is correct.” She then passive-aggressively ignored what Sanders had just said and asked Warren, “What did you think when Senator Sanders told you that a woman could not win an election?”

Along the same lines, Hillary Clinton recently claimed, in mean-girls fashion, of her 2016 bete noire, “Nobody likes him.” She even bashed his supporters, charging “his online Bernie Bros” with “relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.” One imagines this works about as well as the last time Clinton deplorably attacked her adversary’s supporters. She blames Russia. She blames Bernie. She blames. She never looks inward.

And that smugness, characterizing not merely Clinton but the entire Establishment, gives them an unwelcome Midas touch of sorts. Every helping hand shoves down an ally; every clenched fist propels an enemy forward. The Establishment’s slaps that turned Donald Trump (and Brexit) to gold appear to do much the same for Bernie Sanders. They cannot but indulge this counterproductive impulse to use their loud and grating megaphone, which everyone resents, that raises those they seek to lower. They no longer hold the sway they once did. Most of them do not know this but the ones who do lash out, in an oblique manner through their proxies, at the majority. Make no mistake. This is an anti-democratic attack by the few, who push unpopular ideas, on the many who reject them. The Establishment wants the pretense of a republic. Actual representative government? Not so much.

People detached from the very people on whose behalf they claim to wield their enormous power always breed resentment. And nowhere does the Establishment appear more out of touch than in their faith in their words to sway the masses (who despise them). So they keep talking when they should keep quiet. Even after the marionettes cut the strings the puppeteers continue providing the soundtrack, and at a louder volume, to which nobody mouths along.

“Don’t get high on your own supply,” Elvira Hancock famously counseled Tony Montana. “Don’t believe your own spin,” sounds like similarly sage advice for many politicos. But they seem, like Mr. Montana, unlikely to abide.