Since the 2020 Democrat primary began, Joe Biden has been doing everything he can to associate himself with Barack Obama. The one thing missing from these efforts was Barack Obama, who refused to say anything nice about his former Vice President.

Now, though, with Joe Biden the last man standing, Obama finally decided to endorse Biden. Or more precisely, he finally has admitted that there’s no one left but Biden to reinstate the Obama agenda and carry it through to fruition.

In a way, the endorsement is impressive. Obama delivers it in an earnest tone, almost as if he means it. In terms of substance, though, an astute listener might notice that Obama praises Biden in only the most generic and incongruous tones, while the informed listener will know that the accolades Obama expresses are untrue.

I’m proud to endorse my friend @JoeBiden for President of the United States. Let's go: https://t.co/maHVGRozkX

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 14, 2020

Before naming Biden, Obama says that, in the abstract, America needs “leadership that’s guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace.” To associate those words with Biden is laughable.

Knowledge?

Joe Biden tries to quote the Declaration of Independence, failspic.twitter.com/ULzGB0XtQK

— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) March 2, 2020

Experience? Well, yes . . . but is Joe’s the experience America wants? Robert Gates, Obama’s defense secretary, wrote in his memoir that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Joe Biden engaged in a high-tech lynching against Clarence Thomas, while simultaneously demeaning Anita Hill, a black woman. The list of Biden’s “experience” is endless, and none of it is good.

Honesty? Joe Biden was driven out of the 1988 presidential race because of his dishonesty, an echo of his law school problems. What's also inconsistent with honesty is the corruption that’s benefitted his family for decades, including his dirty dealings with the Chinese government on Hunter’s behalf.

Humility? This is the man who keeps telling all who will listen that he’s smarter than they are, and who told a voter “you’re full of sh*t” and then threatened to beat him up.

Empathy and grace? For almost fifty years, Biden has lied about the man who was involved in the car accident that killed Biden’s wife and daughter, calling him a drunk, when it was Mrs. Biden who caused the fatal accident. Defaming an innocent man is the opposite of empathy and grace. In many of his interactions with people less powerful than he is, Biden is a bully.

And of course, where in that litany of virtues does one put Biden’s creepy obsession with little girls or the fact that he’s credibly accused of sexually assaulting a staffer?

Obama then dedicates a mere two minutes out of twelve to discuss Joe himself. We learn, among other things, that Joe helped Obama with the slowest, lowest recession recovery in American history; Joe was the one who kept a disease in a far corner of untraveled Africa from coming to America; and Joe will surround himself with experts.

Where Obama gets excited is about his own agenda, especially if it means hewing left in Bernie Sanders fashion. Obama imagines Joe pushing Obamacare further so that it’s a total public option, rejoining the Paris agreement, reinstating economy-killing environmental regulations, and pardoning student loans. He’s thrilled that Biden will have “what is the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history” – although he seems more grateful to Bernie than to Biden for that fact.

Obama throws in the usual insults against Trump, lies about Trump’s approach to health insurance, says that a president besieged by the entire media establishment “has a propaganda network,” and insists that the COVID-19 pandemic needs to be used as a springboard for progressive change (i.e., never let a crisis go to waste). Most laughably, in light of the cascade of evidence that the Obama administration attempted to steal an election and then commit a coup against a sitting president, Obama accuses the Trump administration of “disregard[ing] American principles of rule of law.”

Between his reluctance to endorse Biden and his damning him with faint praise, Obama’s encomiums for his former Veep come across as disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst. However, what does shine through is that Obama genuinely sees a Biden victory as the last hope for a rerun of Obama’s presidency.