(CNN) On Thursday in Omaha, Nebraska, former Vice President Joe Biden said this about current Vice President Mike Pence: "The fact of the matter is it was followed on by a guy who's a decent guy, our vice president, who stood before this group of allies and leaders and said, 'I'm here on behalf of President Trump,' and there was dead silence. Dead silence."

Biden was referencing the rocky reception Pence received last month at a security conference in Munich as a way to illustrate the damage President Donald Trump has done to our relationships with our allies across the world. The idea Biden was pushing was that Pence, in and of himself, is someone who would get a perfectly polite reception at a conference like the one in Munich but, because of Trump, Pence had been given the silent treatment. It was, as criticisms of Trump go, relatively pedestrian.

Except that Biden referred to Pence as a "decent guy." Which the liberal left -- especially on Twitter -- immediately seized. Cynthia Nixon, actress and unsuccessful candidate for governor in New York, tweeted this at Biden : "@JoeBiden you've just called America's most anti-LGBT elected leader 'a decent guy.' Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community."

Biden quickly responded to Nixon, offering an apology. "You're right, Cynthia," wrote Biden. "I was making a point in a foreign policy context, that under normal circumstances a Vice President wouldn't be given a silent reaction on the world stage," he said. "But there is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the Vice President."

This entire episode is very revealing -- about Biden, his near-certain run for the 2020 Democratic nomination and the state of the party that Biden wants to lead. Here are three things it tells us:

Read More