Joe Biden won’t get pushed around.

The 77-year-old presidential candidate is out to show voters he can still bring the heat to take on Donald Trump next year.

That’s what he did in Iowa at a town hall in Mason City on Dec. 3. The former vice president leading the Democratic pack for president, heaving his chest (sort of), challenged an 83-year-old to contests of push-ups, running and IQ — feats of strength in the season of Festivus.

Man, Biden wasn’t having it. A man in the audience asked about the stuff Donald Trump has been saying about Biden’s kid and Ukraine. It was on.

“You’re a damn liar,” Biden said, his left hand in the front pocket of his brown trousers.

And the guy, nobody got his name, said Grandpa Joe was too old to be commander and chief. Nuh-uh, he didn’t.

“I’m not sedentary,” he said at one point. “I get up.” And at another point, he said, “Get your words straight, Jack.” Never took his hand out of his pocket.

Just to be factual and in context, Biden would be the oldest president ever, adding eight years to the record, beating the former champion graybeard, Donald Trump, who took office at 70.

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It’s easy to see the strategy and the genuine insult behind Biden’s attitude.

Scrappin’ VP on the No Malarkey Tour needs to dial it back a notch, before it becomes self-parody.

He’s already starting to seem a little like Popeye the Sailor Man. And then some smart-aleck is going to finish it, “He lives in a garbage can. He likes to go swimmin’ with bow-legged women. He’s Joe Biden, the sailor man.”

I was in fifth grade. I know how campaigns work. Biden wasn’t even in the military.

About the same time this was going on in the political universe — where, it’s said, coincidences never happen — another Democrat in the race was getting an interesting endorsement.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet from Colorado was being talked up by former Clinton whisperer James Carville and influential journalist Al Hunt on their popular podcast, “2020 Politics War Room.”

Both are bullish on Bennet, even though the guy can’t seem to move north of the 1% neighborhood in the polling.

“There’s no United States senator that I would be as confident would be as good a president as Michael Bennet,” said Hunt.

Carville, whose words carry influence in Democratic circles if only for entertainment value, was aboard the Bennet bandwagon, too.

He said a lot of people tell him nice things about Bennet, and when 25 people tell you that you have shaving cream on your earlobe, then you, my friend, probably have shaving cream on your earlobe. It’s hard to argue with that, as weird as it may be.

“I’m for Michael Bennet. I’m not even being cute about it,” Carville said, while being cute about his earlobe and shaving cream. 

People from my part of the world, the Deep South, have way of saying things that get stuck in your head, and that’s what Carville is doing for Bennet.

I’m not saying it’s enough to put him in the White House. It’s enough, though, to keep him in the national conversation. If Biden seals the nomination, picks a running mate or seats a Cabinet, Colorado can kiss the talented Mr. Bennet goodbye.

Bennet was the puncher against Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-All proposal a few weeks ago, and he brings a history of being a problem-solver who will join up with Republicans when the cause is right.

Despite nearly a decade in Washington, Bennet still has the tousled-hair, rolled-up sleeves air of an outsider. Biden is a Delaware senator who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Bennet is an Eastern kid, too, but also brings the Western swagger we’re led to believe matters elsewhere.

Biden would have to not know what Bennet did last summer, when Judy Woodruff on PBS asked him, “Does Joe Biden represent the future?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Bennet said. “I think we — it’s time for a new generation of leadership.”

Watch it, senator; that could put ya in a push-up contest.

VP? Probably not. If Biden wanted youth, he would be better advised to look at Mayor Pete Buttigieg. If he wants a strong woman — a woman of color, no less — he couldn’t do much better than Sen. Kamala Harris.

If he wanted to unite the party base with the moderates, he could pick Warren and throw healthcare in a blender, which might be what it takes, if Democrats take the Senate next year along with the White House.

Bennet, however, is a diamond in the rough in this race. His value only increases as long as he and Biden are running on dual tracks.