One defense of Joe Biden today is: There’s no way his charge that Republicans will “put y’all back in chains” was a race card, because it would be absurd to equate repeal of Dodd-Frank to chattel slavery.

Yes, it would be absurd. And it’s exactly the sort of thing Democrats often do.

Here’s Democratic congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. saying defense of the 10th Amendment is defense of slavery. “Truer words or more faithful ideas could not have been attributed to Confederate President Jefferson Davis or his Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stevens [sic.],” Jackson said of Rick Perry’s invoking the 10th Amendment in an argument for a smaller federal government.

Here’s Democratic former presidential candidate Al Sharpton making a similar charge at the time.

Senior Democratic congressman Charlie Rangel said in 1994, “It’s not ‘spic’ and ‘nigger’ anymore. They say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.’ ”

Liberal journalist Michael Tomasky wrote last month that Romney was a race-monger for using the word “Obamacare” in front of the NAACP.

I could find plenty of other examples, but you get the point. There’s no GOP-favored policy that Democrats won’t compare to racism, slavery, or Jim Crow. And after Biden’s comments this week, we can check derivatives regulation off the list of Policies Where Democrats Say The GOP Position Is Equivalent to Supporting Slavery.

Racism persists, obviously. I thought Newt Gingrich was playing the race card when he called Obama a “food-stamp president.” But here’s a major reason some conservatives deny racism exists and bristle at any charge of that Republicans are playing the race card: Democrats and liberal journalists are constantly calling us racists for the crime of being conservative.