I LOVE THE SMELL OF DEMOCRATS’ PANIC IN THE MORNING: The chorus of liberal/progressive chants of “Run, Joe, Run!” grows daily. A subtle piece is this one by Washington Post writer Ruth Marcus, “Biden can’t defeat Clinton; she can do that herself.”

One troubling snapshot from a new Wall St. Journal-NBC poll: More women now view Clinton negatively than positively.

Biden has a quality of genuineness, of humanity, that seems to elude the public Clinton. My most enduring — and endearing — vision of Biden is seeing the grinning vice president at the annual summer party for the media, chasing a group of children with a Super Soaker water gun, and allowing himself to be thoroughly drenched by the tiny mob. Biden is the ultimate extrovert.

Clinton, by contrast, is self-contained and guarded, if not by nature then after years of public pounding. One person who knows her well told me that the key to understanding Clinton was to read Susan Cain’s book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.” One of Cain’s examples is Eleanor Roosevelt, a heroine of Clinton’s and, like Clinton, married to the ultimate extrovert.

Marcus makes her preference for Clinton clear in this piece, painting Clinton as a misunderstood introvert in the shadow of an extroverted husband. Yawn. Clinton isn’t introverted; she’s prickly, arrogant and dismissive. As a piece in the Boston Herald put it this morning:

If Vice President Joe Biden decides to take on Hillary Clinton in a run for the White House, his best bet may be beating her on the personality front, a political strategist said this morning on Boston Herald Radio.

“It comes down to a character issue and he is different than Hillary,” said Gretchen Hamel, president and founder of Highline Strategies. “You have seen her campaign make some missteps. It’s Hillary being Hillary, she is very guarded. Biden is a more approachable, likable guy that you would want to have a beer with.”

Yeah, I’d have a beer with Uncle Joe, so long as he kept his hands to himself. In the battle of personalities, Biden wins, hands down.

Clinton is only the front-runner because she bears her husband’s name and is seen by many as carrying his legacy into a third term. Heck, my own mother insists that, if Hillary is elected, “it will really be Bill who is running things” (and she says this in a positive tone, believe it or not). Hillary’s chief accomplishment is her husband, as sad as that may be. She is hardly the kind of woman that women should want to carry the mantle of “first female president.”

We can do much better than Hillary. Carly Fiorina deserves more attention, for example, but because she’s in the wrong political party, the mainstream media is doing everything it can to ignore her.