Things were going well for Joe Biden for about a day. His moderate opponents were dropping like flies and, after his South Carolina win, he had the Big Joementum going into Super Tuesday. He even made his trounced opponents come to a Texas rally and endorse him, just to drive the knife in a little harder.

It was also going so swell until, near the end of the rally, Biden brought former congressman and presidential candidate laughing stock Beto O’Rourke up on stage and said this: “I want to make something clear —I’m gonna guarantee you, this is not the last you’re seeing of this guy— you’re gonna take care of the gun problem with me, you’re gonna be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you, I’m counting on you, we need you badly.”

While trying to appeal to voters in Texas and in the gun-loving South right before Super Tuesday, Biden makes a man who has publicly called for gun confiscation the new proposed head of his gun control effort.

What the what?

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Fox News got the Trump campaign response: “Yikes,” remarked spokesman Andrew Clark. And then this: “Joe Biden promises Beto O’Rourke, who pushed for gun confiscation for legal gun owners, will ‘be the one who leads’ his gun control effort,” said GOP Rapid Response Director Steve Guest. “2020 Democrats are unambiguous about their anti-Second Amendment agenda.”

NBC, no lover of Trump, chimed in. NBC News’ Benjy Sarlin said, “Biden hugging Beto going ‘You’re going to take care of the gun problem for me!’ is a thing you will see in a Republican ad someday.”

Poor Joe Biden.

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His natural instincts as a people-pleaser make for a political slobbering puppy, wanting to bestow his happy largesse on any pal in his path. He wasn’t thinking at that moment, he was feeling, and Beto happened to be standing there. So Biden rhetorically and effusively licked him all over, as any out of control puppy would, and promised him he would be his pal forever.

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For his part, Beto just looked confused. Which, if memory serves, is par for the course for the former candidate.