It is no surprise that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to lock Donald Trump up.

They have been trying to do that ever since he was elected president in 2016. That was when he committed the unpardonable sin of defeating Hillary Clinton, the first woman to almost become president.

Now he is on the verge of defeating Kamala Harris, the second woman to also almost become president.

So obviously Trump is a clear and present danger, if not to the country and the Democrat Party then at least to Democrat women who want to become president.

And he is Hitler to boot if you listen to Harris and the Democrats, which makes you wonder if they even know who Hitler was or what he did, like, for instance, the systematic World War II murder of six million Jews—men, women and children.

It is understandable if they don’t. They have no memory of Hitler or of the war. Harris, born in 1964, was not even around when Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker April 30, 1944, as the Soviet army and the Allies closed in on him. Joe Biden was two years old at the time.

But that has not stopped them from going beyond answering Trump insult for insult in a presidential campaign that has sunk to new lows. After you call someone Hitler there is nothing left.

And Joe Biden now wants to lock Trump up, or destroy him, acting as though he, his Justice Department and the Democrats have not been trying to destroy him for years, beginning with his impeachment when he was president and continuing with the subsequent legal hounding they’ve chased him with ever since.

In a rare Harris boosting campaign event in New Hampshire a week ago Biden, with a weird look, said, “If I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up.”

Then, apparently realizing what he said, he added, “Politically lock him up—lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Biden could have added, but did not, that sending Trump to prison under his criminalization of American politics was what he has been doing all along.

And to be clear, in talking about sending someone to prison, Biden was talking about Trump and not the other guy, his son Hunter.

If anyone is going to be locked up, it is Hunter Biden, not Donald Trump.

While Trump faces sentencing Nov.26 for falsifying business records in a dubious case brought by Manhattan Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Hunter Biden faces years in prison on gun charges as well as for federal tax evasion.

Were Biden interested in uniting the country, as he promised when he was elected, instead of dividing it, as has happened, he could have taken a different path.

It is too late now.

But had he been a magnanimous leader instead of a bitter old man rejected by his own party, he could have done much to unite the country going out the door. And he could have helped Kamala Harris on the way out.

One way he could have done it is to have offered Trump a pardon on the federal charges against him. Such a move would not only have astonished the country, but it would have done much to ease the division that has turned people against one another.

With Harris at his side in agreement, Biden in a stroke of a pen could have shown that he truly was concerned about bringing the country together and ending the vitriol that has split the country in two.

It would have made him big. He also could have thrown in a pardon for Hutner at the same time. If not, then Trump as president could have returned the favor if he won the election.

Such a move by Biden, with Harris in agreement would also have helped Harris by giving her the stature, magnanimity and gravitas that she sorely lacks.

And despite being as ornery as he is, Trump might have even accepted the pardon.

It did not happen.  But it would have made a nice movie.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com