Leonard Greene

Her loving students might call her Dr. B., but one cynical columnist has gone so far as to deride her as “America’s most famous community-college teacher.”

Jill Biden can’t win. If she talks her husband into staying the course after his widely panned debate performance, she’s a power-hungry puppet master who’s guilty of elder abuse.

But if she convinces President Joe Biden to abandon his reelection campaign, she’s admitting that she has been part of a cruel “Weekend at Bernie’s” charade that has propped him up for months, maybe even years.

I didn’t vote for Jill Biden any more than I voted for Michelle Obama or Nancy Reagan.

But I knew she came with the package. So it doesn’t bother me that she advises her husband, the president, even in moments of crisis.

What does bother me is this wicked attack on her character and, even worse, on her credentials.

To America, the first lady is known as Dr. Jill Biden. No, she isn’t a medical doctor. And, no, she doesn’t have a Ph.D.

But she is not a quack, as some of her worst critics have said. Columnist Maureen Callahan dissed Jill Biden’s community college credentials in the Daily Mail this past week.

Jill Biden is a devoted teacher and college professor who earned her honorific by completing the coursework required to receive a doctorate degree in education. That was after earning two master’s degrees in the same field.

Proud and noble accomplishments.

Two days a week, she takes off her FLOTUS hat and stands in front of students at Northern Virginia Community College, where she is a professor in the English department.

But some of her political enemies have for years insisted on treating her like she’s some fake TV court judge whose legal resume wouldn’t fit on the back of a business card.

“Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo,” author Joseph Epstein wrote in a 2020 op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal. “Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”

As if to say that education isn’t as important as some other academic disciplines.

Biden’s debate debacle has given rise to some wild replacement conspiracy theories, none wilder than the suggestion that Biden should dump Vice President Kamala Harris and put former President Barack Obama on the ticket.

Don’t bet on it. The authors of the Constitution’s 12th Amendment already nixed that idea.

The second-wildest theory is that Jill Biden herself is actually angling for the job, as evidenced by her appearance on the cover of Vogue magazine.

Opinion writer Ingrid Jacques even said in USA Today that the cream-colored tuxedo dress she wore in her cover shoot made her look “very presidential.”

It should be noted that some of the most cutting comments about the first lady have come from white women, members of the same demographic that helped put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.

When Trump was elected president, exit polls showed that he had the support of 42% of American women.

Even more shocking was that he received the votes of 53% of white women — even though a white woman was running against him.

From there, Trump was able to nominate three conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court and overturn the right to abortion.

“We are the first generation in half a century to give our daughters a country with fewer rights than we had,” the first lady told a campaign crowd earlier this year.

“Book bans. Voting laws gutted. Court decisions that strip away our most basic freedoms. But circumstance is not destiny,” she said.

A day after the debate, Jill Biden took to the stage in a statement dress decorated with a simple word: Vote.

It was an important message. It was just what the doctor ordered.