Vice President Biden is making a mistake, in our view, in trying to run for president on the idea that America is full of deplorables. Hes launched his campaign with a video featuring neo-Nazis marching at Charlottesville. Hes suggesting that President Trump  and his millions of followers  are racists and anti-Semites. That libel backfired on Secretary Clinton. What can Mr. Biden be thinking?

It may be that the ex-veep wants to deflect attention from the Democrats own problems. Mr. Bidens party hasnt been able to condemn the anti-Semitism surging in the Democrats own caucus. Even Mr. Biden himself, supposedly a centrist, shrank from taking on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her ilk. Mrs. Pelosi at least tried to get a statement, though she backed down.

Nor have Mr. Bidens apologies for his own self-perceived defaults cut much ice in his own party. This week he reportedly telephoned Anita Hill to express regrets that he was unable in 1991 to ensure a proper hearing of her allegations of sexual harassment against Justice-to-be Clarence Thomas. Ms. Hill promptly let it be known that his call left her, as the New York Times put it, deeply unsatisfied.

The Democrats own issues are but part of the problem. Mr. Trump has set his own traps for Mr. Biden on race and related issues. This flashed in the news earlier this month when Mr. Trump hosted at the White House an astonishing event for the First Step Act. Thats Mr. Trumps new bipartisan prison reform measure that helps deserving prisoners win early release from long sentences.

One has to watch the video to appreciate the spot in which Mr. Trump has put Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump brought into the White House some of the prisoners who have been gained early release. It was an event filled with interracial warmth. Mr. Trump noted that the First Step Act rolls back provisions of the 1994 Clinton crime law that disproportionately impacted the African American community.

Mr. Trump didnt  and didnt have to  add that the Clinton crime bill was written by a then-senator named Joe Biden. Everyone at that event understood the point. Its one thing for Mr. Biden to run around apologizing for hugging women and kissing their hair. Or expressing regrets to Anita Hill. Its another to have to run around apologizing for a crime bill that was one of the centerpieces of his career.

Its not our purpose here to suggest that Vice President Biden is without virtues. We are admirers of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and if Mr. Biden were prepared to campaign as one of its stalwarts, hed have plenty of covet from the Sun. We comprehend he could yet win. In recent years, though, the conservative wing of the Democratic Party has been on the political equivalent of life support.

Thats the drama, if there is any, in Mr. Bidens bid, at age 76, to make one last run for the presidency. He may be polling ahead of Mr. Trump, at least at the moment, but is the Democratic Party still there? It has long since abandoned the war that Mr. Biden helped launch in Iraq. The Obama-Biden administration failed to enforce the Jerusalem Embassy Act that Mr. Biden co-sponsored.

Mr. Biden cant even run on the lunch bucket issues of jobs and growth  it is, after all, under Mr. Trump that weve emerged at full employment, with record low unemployment in minority communities. The last time the Democrats delivered that kind of jobs and growth was under President Clinton, who rode the Reagan boom and declared the era of big government was over. An aberrant moment in time, indeed.