Biden’s striking a muscular posture for the benefit of crestfallen Democrats who think voters want a caricature in the White House.

Democratic representative Greg Casar secured a national profile for himself last year by going on one of his semi-regular “thirst strikes” on the steps of the Capitol to lobby for mandatory water breaks lest employers be allowed to forcibly dehydrate their employees. Today, the progressive lawmaker is advising his fellow Democrats to eschew tacky stunt politics.

Of course, Casar posited plenty of self-serving excuses for his party’s political conundrum in his post-election interview with the New York Times published late last week. “I think the Democratic Party brand was already struggling so much with working-class voters that we could not survive the onslaught of Republican dark money and lies,” he mused with palpable self-pity. But voters turned on Democrats for both “substantive reasons and message reasons,” Casar added. On the substantive side, the congressman articulated what has become conventional wisdom among Democratic elites: The party engaged in too much identitarian agitation and didn’t do enough to foment class conflict.

Democrats, Casar said, must “clearly communicate” to voters precisely who is “screwing them in this economy,” and they must do so with maximum bitterness. Otherwise, “We can sound preachy or policy wonky or disconnected or like institutionalists,” he observed.

Joe Biden’s communications team must have found Casar’s prognosis intriguing. The outgoing president’s social-media managers did their best to exemplify the conversant, enlightened populism for which progressives believe voters hunger. In the process, Biden’s aides demonstrated why Casar’s prescription is easier said than done.

If that anecdote sounds familiar to you, that’s probably because you’ve encountered this left-wing chestnut at some point over the course of the near-decade they’ve spent complaining about one guy’s boat.

The root of the Left’s frustration stems from consumer advocate groups who warn that some banks failed to clearly explain to their customers that certain accounts allow them to draw overdraft funds and collect fees on what is, in effect, a loan. Some consumer watchdogs believe it would be better to force banks to provide a clear opt-out and be declined at the register when their accounts run dry. Others maintain that conscientious consumers already know that overdraft services are almost always optional, and there’s no need to impose more compliance costs on banks that will be passed onto their patrons to account for the assumed ignorance of others. Moreover, overdraft services spare consumers that embarrassment while conveying a costly lesson about the need to watch one’s finances closely.

There is room for debate here, but that’s not what Biden’s team was hoping to spark. The president’s social-media post is designed only to whip up a popular mob that is angry about the existence of pleasure boats and overdraft fees. He didn’t even bother to direct readers’ attention to his administration’s efforts to cap overdraft fees in a bid to halt the “exploitation” of consumers, a crusade that has had the effect of limiting consumers’ access to a range of financial services.

Biden’s not trying to start a national conversation. He’s striking a muscular posture for the benefit of crestfallen Democrats who think voters want a caricature in the White House.