At last night’s Democratic debate in Detroit, the second of two this week, Joe Biden predictably emerged as the primary target of attacks from his rivals. And for good reason. From his longstanding deference to corporate interests to his unreliable record on reproductive rights, his zealotry for militarism abroad and his indefensible role in authoring brutal mass incarceration and “tough-on-crime” policies, the former vice president is a living avatar for everything wrong with the way career centrist Democratic insiders do politics.

Notably, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand hammered him for a 1981 op-ed in which he claimed that federal subsidies for childcare would cause “the deterioration of family.” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also hit Biden for a recent speech to a group of wealthy donors in which he declared “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were president, then seizing another moment to demand he answer for the record number of deportations that occurred during his tenure in the Obama administration.

Even Sen. Cory Booker, whose generally insufferable schtick as the field’s happy warrior largely spurns negativity, demanded Biden stop hiding behind his former boss and take some responsibility for a change: “Mr. Vice President, you can’t have it both ways. You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and then dodge it when it’s not.”