The other day Joe Biden claimed that he would consider a Republican running mate. Right. The chances of that happening are nil, given the hardcore leftist composition of the Democratic Party. But Biden likes to feed the mythology that he is still a moderate. The Trump campaign can’t let him get away with that lie. They should paint him early and often as a liberal Democrat who long ago lost touch with the Rust Belt.

This is, after all, a pol who giddily whispered in Barack Obama’s ear that a massive government takeover of health care “was a big f—ing deal,” and pushed a reluctant Obama to embrace gay marriage. “Scranton Joe” is more like Hollywood Joe, popping up on silly talk shows, officiating at gay weddings, and now pronouncing Obamacare only a baby step toward a more progressive future.

It can’t be repeated enough that “Climate Change” Joe doesn’t give a damn about the ruinous consequences of extreme environmentalism for Rust Belt industries. His Climate Change plans read like something Al Gore might have scribbled to him in a note. Biden is willing to sacrifice countless jobs in the name of an abstraction as absurd as “environmental justice.” He has endorsed the ludicrous “Green New Deal,” and by 2050, he promises “net-zero emissions.” He also solemnly promises that he “will not accept contributions from oil, gas and coal corporations or executives,” as if they are members of the mafia.

The Trump campaign has plenty of material to work with here. If implemented, Biden’s extreme environmentalism will bankrupt the Rust Belt. Biden has the gall to say, while unveiling these destructive fantasies, that he is the candidate of the “middle class” and that he will leave “no workers behind.” Leave no workers behind? That’s his stated goal—he wants to leave oil, gas, and coal industry workers in the dust.

Biden has spent much of the campaign so far bragging about his role as a “pioneer” of left-wing causes—from demonizing oil companies to presiding over gay nuptials. He angrily says that he “didn’t have to evolve” on LGBTQ issues, such was his early support for it. He has insisted that all of the Democrat candidates are equally left-wing and “on the same page.”

On issue after issue, Biden is taking hardline liberal stances. He wants to abolish the death penalty, a position Obama and Hillary didn’t even take. On abortion, his absolutism now extends to forcing all Americans to pay for them. And he has gone completely quiet on law-and-order issues, as a form of penance for past remarks.

All of this has to be thrown back in his face during the general election, lest he hoodwink independents and liberal Republicans. All Trump needs to do is quote Biden back to Biden, such as his comment, “I have the most progressive record of anybody running.”

Is that what the Rust Belt wants? A candidate who will raise its taxes, wipe out its jobs, regulate its industries into extinction, and turn public schools into LGBTQ laboratories.

Eager to dupe independents and Republicans, the media will of course help Biden in a general election position himself as a less doctrinaire Democrat. But it is just a con. Blue-collar Joe disappeared decades ago. He is far more comfortable on the Ellen show than on the streets of Scranton. He has given up Amtrak for private jets, and, like his lobbyist brother and grifter son, has cashed in on his last name.

But isn’t he the Catholic everyman? No, that too is a tedious myth. He is more like the entitled pol who hits on women before he hits Mass, using his religion as a mascot while betraying its most fundamental teachings. Like John Kerry whose checkered Catholicism cost him the Catholic vote, Biden’s phony faith is more of a liability than an asset. It is just one more reminder that he is an out-of-touch elitist panting after the trends of the moment.

Biden has of course convinced himself that he is a great gift to America and a moral authority for the world. He informs us that his sheer decency will get the “world to respect America again.” This is quite a claim coming from an admitted plagiarist who supports partial-birth abortion and once told China that he “fully understands” its policy of killing children who exceed its eugenic quotas. Biden’s blarney has no bottom to it, starting with the fiction that he remains moderate Joe.