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Joe knows it too. "I'm a tactile politician," he said of himself during a recent speech in Dover, Del., his home state.

And the world knows it, too, by way of video memes of "Creepy Uncle Joe" appearing during photo-ops to move in on women or their daughters, massage their shoulders, whisper in their ears or nuzzle them on the nape of their necks.

But now, as he considers another presidential run, this time in the #MeToo era, Uncle Joe's "Mr. Hands" image has come back to haunt him.

A Connecticut woman, Amy Lappos, told the Hartford Courant that Biden put his hand around her neck at a 2009 political fundraiser and rubbed noses with her.

That followed a similar complaint last weekend from former Nevada state legislator Lucy Flores, who accused Biden of putting his hands on her shoulders before a rally in 2014 when she was running for lieutenant governor. Biden smelled her hair, the woman said, and kissed her on top of her head.

These complaints have taken on a new urgency in the punitive atmosphere of the #MeToo era, an era that led to the resignation of Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in late 2017 after photos surfaced of him smiling as he pantomimed a fake grope of sleeping Los Angeles radio host Leeann Tweeden's chest.

Franken resigned under pressure from some fellow Democrats, led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. But she suffered a backlash from Democratic donors and others who were upset that she helped push out a rising star like Franken over a gag photo while President Donald Trump remained employed, despite charges of sexual misconduct from more than 20 women.

As Franken departed, I wrote that, for all of its virtuous motives, the rising "reckoning" demanded by the #MeToo movement could backfire if we who believe in equal rights for women don't calibrate our outrage. "Every crime does not call for capital punishment," I wrote.

There's a big difference, I offered, between Franken's horseplay and Alabama's unsuccessful Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged improprieties with teenage girls, which greased the slide to his defeat.

One particularly powerful voice in Democratic circles, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, stood up for Biden on Monday and said that, whatever else we may think of the allegations, they don't disqualify the former Delaware senator from running for president.

In a word, that's wise. If Biden, who has been leading Democratic preference polls, decides to run for president, he also would be wise to keep his hands to himself and let the voters decide his fate.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)

(c) 2019 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.