As the never-ending stream of Democratic presidential candidates line up to support insane ideas like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, there was a rumbling that a savior was about to emerge. A man who does not stand on countertops. A man who does not refer to himself as Spartacus. That savior was supposed to be Joe Biden.

Biden, who had already been a heartbeat away from the presidency, was something the other candidates were not: normal.

Nicknamed “Amtrak Joe” because of his regular-guy habit of hopping the train to go home on weekends when he served in Congress, Biden would be a shoo-in for the nomination in regular times. But these are not regular times.

Instead, Biden has gotten himself caught up in a web of wokeness. Railing against “white male culture” this week, Biden apologized for his role during the Anita Hill testimony, as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman for the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings nearly 30 years ago.

“To this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to give her the kind of hearing she deserved,” Biden said.

It’s peak wokeness to self-flagellate and apply modern-day sensibilities to events that happened decades ago, but what’s interesting about this particular line of self-attack is that Biden toed the Democratic line even then. “I wish I could have done something, and I opposed Clarence Thomas’ nomination — I voted against him.”

Apparently, that’s not enough. And this was just the latest stop on what The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein calls “Joe Biden’s Apology Tour.” Klein predicts Biden’s involvement in the hearings “is sure to dog him as he seeks the Democratic nomination, so it’s obvious he was trying to get ahead of the story.”

Yet the all-but-certain wannabe is demolishing the exact thing that makes him formidable in a general election — the way he comes off as a moderate, working-class guy who can reach across the aisle and deal with Republicans — even before he jumps into the Democratic primary race.

In late February, Biden labeled Vice President Mike Pence “a decent guy.” This shouldn’t be controversial because, well, Mike Pence is a decent guy.

But Biden got in trouble with the wacky left for his compliment and was badgered on Twitter by actress Cynthia Nixon, who called Pence “America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader.”

Taking no chances, Biden spun on a dime and apologized for saying something nice about the vice president.

Democrats have spent two years implying that the president is a Russian asset; they could use some normalcy on their bench. That Biden can’t run for president without beefing up his woke credentials is a problem for his party.

The joke is that Joe Biden currently sits atop all the polls of Democratic presidential candidates specifically because he’s not some new kooky radical, and the sooner he realizes it the better. He’s simply not a “Democratic Socialist”; he’s doesn’t come from the modern crop of Democrats who believe money grows on trees.

He’s part of the administration that came up with ObamaCare, the very thing the “Medicare for All” folks are trying to overturn. What Biden needs to figure out is whether to run as himself or take a chance on wokeness. So far he’s choosing the latter.

Meanwhile, there’s so much noise around new hotshots like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with her glossy Time magazine covers and snappy Twitter profile, that it’s easy to overlook that her favorability ratings are in the toilet.

Only 23 percent of Americans have a favorable view of young Ocasio-Cortez. Even Donald Trump’s ratings hover in the mid-40s.

Turns out Americans aren’t really into her whole rebuild-every-building-in-America-in-10-years thing or the way she shuts down any criticism by playing the victim. Yet candidate after candidate seem to want to follow her off a cliff into the lake of wokeness below.

If Biden drops his “Hey, guys, I’m a woke millennial just like you” shtick, he can win this primary. If not, he’ll be like AOC — beloved by the media and the wackos and no one else.

Twitter: @Karol