Posted by
Steve on Saturday, August 23, 2008 10:58:13 AM
Barack Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate last night. This has to be a gift to the John McCain campaign. There are a lot of reasons to pick Joe Biden, but there are a lot more not to pick Joe Biden for Barack Obama.
Joe Biden is the consummate Washington insider. The Obama campaign has tried to picture John McCain as the Washington insider. Joe Biden has been in Washington about the same length of time that John McCain. He is younger, but he was younger when he started being elected. He was first elected at 29. For John McCain at 29, he was still in the Hanoi Hilton.
Joe Biden ran for President in 1988 and tried to run as the experienced candidate. His most memorable commercial pictured him as experienced and said that this job is too important to learn on the job. He was talking about Michael Dukakis, but could have been talking about Barack Obama. The McCain campaign came out with a commercial that quotes Joe Biden as basically repeating everything he said about Michael Dukakis when talking about Barack Obama. The commercial also has Joe Biden saying he would be honored to serve on a ticket with John McCain. That will be a difficult quote to live down for the Democrats.
One of the main reasons that Joe Biden flamed out in his attempt for the Presidency in 1988 was plagiarism. He took whole speeches by a British politician and used them as his own. When he was called on it, he denied that he used the speeches. Careful analysis (putting the two speeches side by side) showed that the two were nearly identical. After being shown to be a fraud, he withdrew as a Presidential candidate. For most of us, he was though to have gone back to civilian life. Then he started showing up on Rush Limbaugh’s show as “slow” Joe Biden. That is because he just never seems to understand anything, even when it is laid out for the world to see.
The Biden selection shows some desperation on the part of the Obama campaign. They are losing ground to McCain. They need to stop the bleeding quickly. Their thought with Biden is that he is strong where McCain is strong and that will fix the problem. Their bigger problem is that Biden makes a lie out of their “hope and change” agenda. Of course, the “hope and change” agenda was nothing more than a big lie in the first place. When you look at the speakers that Obama has selected for the Democrat convention, you see how much “hope and change” he really intended. Every bad Democrat idea from the last 30 years will be trotted out as part of the “hope and change” agenda. Every one of those bad ideas has been soundly defeated in the past by voters and will be defeated again.
Mrs. Clinton gave Obama the best chance at victory in November. The problem with Mrs. Clinton is that Barack would have to have food tasters and car starters as part of his official group of advisors. With Joe Biden, that will not be a problem. But, Obama never seriously considered Mrs. Clinton. He only said that he was because he wanted to keep the Clinton people quiet. They would not raise much of a stink of their person is being considered seriously for a position. When they figure out that she was never even looked at as a running mate, there will be some dissention in the ranks of the Democrat party.
Joe Biden is a gold mine of quotes for the John McCain campaign to mine. He is a loose cannon when it comes to his mouth. His clip disparaging the immigrants from India owning 7/11 stores will be played over and over. That will not help Obama with the immigrant population.
One thing the Joe Biden selection by Obama does is loosen the need to get the McCain running mate selection exactly right. It is still important to get it right, but a small error will not be fatal. Had Obama selected Mrs. Clinton, the need to select the exactly right Republican Vice-President would be crucial. John McCain announces his Vice-Presidential choice next Friday. Who it is remains to be seen. He can go exciting and select Sarah Palin of Alaska or Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Or he can go conventional and select Mitt Romney of Massachusetts or Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. That is the choice I am waiting to find out.