Watch out Bernie Sanders.
That was the word Monday from talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, who discussed the complaint by a woman who says former vice president Joe Biden touched her inappropriately.
The complaint means "somebody" in the Democratic Party power structure wants Biden out of the race, he said. And what's happening to Biden now could happen next to Bernie Sanders.
After all, they're both old white men in a party that has diversity as its holy grail.
The issue arose with a complaint made public by Lucy Flores, a state assemblywoman in Nevada.
"She has accused Biden of attacking her, of molesting her, of making her feel nervous, of just making her feel generally uncomfortable, he was sleazy, she didn't ask for it, and she says that because of all this he's disqualified," Limbaugh explained.
He noted reports of Biden's "affectionate physical style."
"You mean like Bill Clinton’s affectionate physical style with interns or Bill Cosby's affectionate physical style with dates or Harvey Weinstein's affectionate physical style with actresses or Amy Klobuchar's affectionate physical style with her staffers or, even better, Kermit Gosnell's affectionate physical style with newborns," he wondered.
He said Biden "has been nuzzling women’s necks while massaging their shoulders, whispering sweet nothings into their ears for his entire Washington career."
It was tolerated because he "kept his place."
But now, Limbaugh said, the powers-that-be apparently have decided he needs to go.
"With all of this diversity, and all of the women who think they’re men and all the men who think they're women and all of the people of color and different sexual genders and orientations or a mixture of all of that, the Democrat Party is trying to rebrand and identify itself to be demographically in touch with whatever they think the new America is or is going to become. And a dinosaur like Biden, it ain't gonna happen. And Crazy Bernie had better keep a sharp eye out on what they’re doing to Biden, because he could be next.
"The point is that somebody somewhere in the Democrat Party doesn't want Joe Biden anywhere near the Democrat nomination. Let's listen to Lucy Flores. She's the Nevada elected official who is bringing the details of this debauchery, this vile behavior into the public arena."
Flores said: "Very unexpectedly and out of nowhere, I feel Joe Biden put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind, lean in, smell my hair, and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head. To have the vice president of the United States do that to me so unexpectedly and just kind of out of nowhere, it was just shocking. It was shocking because you don't expect that kind of intimate behavior, you don't expect that kind of intimacy from someone so powerful and someone who you just have no relationship whatsoever, to touch you and to feel you, and to be so close you in that way. So, I, frankly, just didn't even know how to react. I was just shocked. I felt… I felt powerless. I felt like I couldn't move."
Limbaugh explained: "One thing is abundantly obvious, and that is for decades Democrat women all over this country happily tolerated Joe Biden's behavior. They might have whispered about it to each other, there might have been, you know, 'This guy’s really weird, be careful of this guy, he can't keep his hands off you,' but it doesn’t appear that Joe Biden was ever really considered a bona fide threat to these women or this would have surfaced as a serious matter long ago."
He said either someone wants the issue out in the open, "or somebody within the power structure of the Democrat Party has decreed that it ain’t gonna be Joe Biden."
"He's too old. He doesn't have a chance of defeating Trump, don't care what our polls say now. And they've got one objective: Getting rid of Donald Trump. If they get rid of him via impeachment, if they can get rid of him via scandal or at the 2020 election."
AP reported Biden said over the weekend he never meant to make women feel uncomfortable. But the wire service said Democrats already are questioning whether the 76-year-old Biden is out of step with his party.
"Flores' account of the 2014 incident comes at a crucial moment for Biden. He's been wrestling for months with a final decision on whether to run for president, blowing through several self-imposed deadlines. Advisers are now eyeing an announcement later in April," AP reported.
But there already are more than a dozen candidates for the nomination, and none of them defended Biden following Flores' allegations, the report said.