Joe Biden, 76, jumped into the political race to the White House with a message of — Donald Trump is racist?

Not exactly the sort of inspiring call that brings you to your feet, hands a’clappin’, feet a’stompin’. But OK, Charlottesville is good, too.

“The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America, is at stake,” Biden said, in a widely posted video on social media.

And then he cut right to the identity politics core. He brought up President Donald Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville protests over the removal of a Confederate statue — when Trump said there “were very fine people on both sides.”

What Trump meant is that the protesters included patriots and veterans; what the left ran with is that Trump supported radical white supremacists.

Biden pounced on the left’s line.

“With those words,” he said, “the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence to those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

If Biden was supposed to be the voice of calm, cooler head and reason among a large pool of nutty Democrats — nuts who want to give the Boston Marathon bomber the right to vote, for instance — well then, his announcement video isn’t exactly striking the right tone.

So far, right out of the gate, Biden seems on par with the rest of the Dems who simply want to run on a “Get Trump” message.

And guess what?

No big Barack Obama endorsement yet, either.

Biden may want the White House. But even he needs big money, big support to get it. Even he will need to come up with a platform that doesn’t just say, hey, vote for me — you know me.

That’s kind of what Hillary Clinton did in 2016. And look how it turned out for her.

First appeared at The Washington Times.