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Obama needed someone on his ticket that had experience and could play attack dog when the McCain campaign starts with its below the belt antics. Joe Biden was a solid choice.
Too much is made of the fact he strays off message. Most of the time he is a clear communicator who tells it like it is. This will be a good contrast to the erudite (sometimes to a fault) Obama.
Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Joe Solmonese hailed Biden as a leader whose support has been "unwavering throughout his career." I am also pleased with this selection. Additionally, I'm glad it finally puts the talk of Hillary or Sam Nunn behind us.
Go Obama/Biden!!!
What are your thoughts on the selection?
39 Comments:
Biden — the perfect foil for Palin!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/23/2008 1:55 PM
I supported Biden in the primaries and was disappointed when he lost. I think Obama made a wise choice. Plus (for those who may be interested), there is an astrologer in Philadelphia named Jacob Schwartz who has a rather amazing track record for accurately predicting the winners of elections. He said last year that Biden would be the next president. I thought he blew this one, but looks like he got the right church, but the wrong pew. If anything happens to Obama (God forbid!), Biden would be prez. OBAMA/BIDEN 08!!!!!!!!!!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/23/2008 3:39 PM
Obama chose superbly! Now to hone his debating skills before November!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/23/2008 3:40 PM
I was wishing for Biden to be the nominee, I've been blown away in years past by some of his speeches on CSPAN, and his lucid understanding of the Iraq situation...
So, I'm quite pleased with him being so close to Barack on such significant issues.
posted by Unknown, at
8/23/2008 5:19 PM
Senator Biden's not the worst choice Obama could have made, despite Biden's past plagiarism scandal. In that, though, this may be a perfect pairing:
Mr. Speech Stealer is an ideal fit for Mr. Can't Talk Without a Teleprompter.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/23/2008 7:27 PM
The fun thing about the Biden pick is that the McCain campaign can point to any number of awkward statements by Joe Biden himself. Here's a selection:
Biden, on a post-debate appearance on MSNBC, October 30, 2007: "The only guy on the other side who's qualified is John McCain."
On Meet the Press, November 27, 2005: "I've been calling for more troops for over two years, along with John McCain and others subsequent to my saying that."
Assessing Obama's Iraq plan on September 13, 2007: "My impression is [Obama] thinks that if we leave, somehow the Iraqis are going to have an epiphany" of peaceful coexistence among warring sects. "I've seen zero evidence of that."
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Biden assessed Obama and Hillary Clinton: "The more people learn about them (Obama and Hillary) and how they handle the pressure, the more their support will evaporate."
December 11, 2007: "If Iowans believe campaign funds and celebrity will fix the debacle in Iraq, put the economy on track, and provide health care and education for America's children, they should support another candidate," said Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro. "But I'm confident that Iowans know what I know: our problems will require experience and leadership from Day One. Empty slogans will be no match for proven action on caucus night."
Also that night, Biden said in a campaign ad, "When this campaign is over, political slogans like 'experience' and 'change' will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act."
September 26, 2007: Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro said, "Sen. Obama said he would do everything possible to end the war in Iraq and emphasized the need for a political solution yet he failed to show up to vote for Sen. Biden's critical amendment to provide a political solution in Iraq."
December 26, 2006: "Frankly, I think I'm more qualified than other candidates, and the issues facing the American public are all in my wheelbarrow."
Biden on Meet the Press in 2007, on Hussein's WMDs: "Well, the point is, it turned out they didn't, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued - they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued."
Biden, on Obama's Iraq plan in August 2007: "I don't want [my son] going [to Iraq]," Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. "But I tell you what, I don't want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave makes a big difference." Biden criticized Democratic rivals such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama who have voted against Iraq funding bills to try to pressure President Bush to end the war. "There's no political point worth my son's life," Biden said, according to Radio Iowa. "There's no political point worth anybody's life out there. None."
Biden on Meet the Press, April 29, 2007: "The threat [Saddam Hussein] presented was that, if Saddam was left unfettered, which I said during that period, for the next five years with sanctions lifted and billions of dollars into his coffers, then I believed he had the ability to acquire a tactical nuclear weapon - not by building it, by purchasing it. I also believed he was a threat in that he was - every single solitary U.N. resolution which he agreed to abide by, which was the equivalent of a peace agreement at the United Nations, after he got out of - after we kicked him out of Kuwait, he was violating. Now, the rules of the road either mean something or they don't. The international community says "We're going to enforce the sanctions we placed" or not. And what was the international community doing? The international community was weakening. They were pulling away."
Biden is a wonderful choice. Plus, it might make people who would vote for mccain now that hillary's out change their minds. having an old, experienced white guy as No. 2 could bring around those working class white people who just plain aren't very comfortable with the idea of a "Negro" being in the white house.
posted by Emily K, at
8/23/2008 9:56 PM
Forget Biden. There's more trouble brewing for ol' Obama...
"A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States. Philip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania."
Regardless of whether Obama was actually born in Kenya or in Hawaii, the formerly unthinkable idea that he is constitutionally eligible to be president appears to be cropping up at precisely the wrong time. Or, if you are Hillary Clinton, precisely the right time.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes the mainstream media and Democratic bloggers to look into this story, given their inability to keep the John Edwards affair under their collective hat. If nothing else, the exotic contortions by which they attempt to conclude that a story involving a lawsuit of public record and the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party is not "newsworthy" should be amusing.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/23/2008 10:56 PM
Anonymous, you can mock Obama all you want. There is much to do to nail Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal over this illegal war, the attorney general scandal, the suspension of habeus corpus, the outing of Valerie Plame,the list goes on, all impeachable offenses. Obama's indequacies and Biden's plagiarism pale compared to what the GOP has wrought on this country over the past 8 years. The wheel goes around and McCain's family values mantra doesn't wash any more, look closer. His wife has a half sister too yet claims she's the only child, what is she so ashamed of?
posted by Anonymous, at
8/24/2008 9:05 AM
HMM...didn't Senator Joe Biden support that "illegal" war? And speaking of Vice-President Cheney, here's Joe Biden on Meet the Press in 2007 talking about Saddam Hussein's WMDs:
"Well, the point is, it turned out they didn't, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued - they catalogued them. THIS WAS NOT SOME, SOME CHENEY, YOU KNOW, PIPE DREAM. THIS WAS, IN FACT, CATALOGUED."
Everybody, please just ignore the trolls. Trotting out "scandalous" info about a politician is like telling someone that the Italian Mafia is full of Italians. Nobody here is going to have their minds changed. nobody. not a single anonymous person, not a single person who has the balls to actually sign a name / use an identity. Nobody is going to change their minds. So just stop it.
posted by Emily K, at
8/24/2008 11:49 AM
I am keeping my dignity as i have in the past and will vote third party. Obama has proven through his statements to be homophobic and oppressive and i will not support that. I have always preferred to know up front who hates me, not someone who says one thing and stabs me in the back later. That is exactly what democrats do to gay people and i have one vote which has not been for the best of the worst since Mondale and Reagan. Fagettaboutit!!!!!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/24/2008 12:52 PM
I completely agree Ewe. I'm voting Libertarian. While Libertarians hold many different views on the issue of gay marriage, with some believing marriage, both straight and gay, should not be an issue for government and others believing that gay marriage should be recognized so long as straight marriage is recognized - Libertarians believe "government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships."
posted by Anonymous, at
8/24/2008 1:03 PM
Joe Biden? This was an awful pick Wayne, and is really gonna piss off Hillary Clinton supporters.
Furthermore, Biden is not particularly charismatic, won't enable the Democrats to win any states they wouldn't take otherwise, and is just as liberal as Obama (therefore with little ability to attract moderates). His only political asset is having more political experience than Obama.
This is just a bad pick. There are many candidates that Obama could have chosen that would have brought greater electoral advantage, such as Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana (a well-respected moderate who is more charismatic than Biden and might have put a traditionally Republican state in play).
posted by Anonymous, at
8/24/2008 2:11 PM
Ewe, I'm not enamored of any of them either. My personal choice would have been Dennins Kucinich.
However, in our system, it would be political suicide for any contender for the White House coming out in support of marriage equality. If anyone is going to evolve on that issue alone, it will be Obama, not McCain. You'll never get a republican politician running for the presidency supporting marriage equality either. Look what happened to Dennis! The only courageous one of them all!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 8:35 AM
Biden was not selected by or chosen by Obama. The DNC folk have 'recommended' Biden over the other folk under consideration. Teams of people have been weighing in on the pros and cons of all the candidates and Biden came up on top. That's all. The goal is to get Obama and Democrats into the White house, and to ensure that the Republicans take a back seat for awhile. Obama's change will be slow. Getting someone into the White house means finding someone willing to look 'a tad bit centrist.' There are more and more Republicans jumping on the fence.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 12:47 PM
RobertNYC: It doesn't matter. We will have to fight democrats and/or republicans in the courts so i do not vote or cater to these charlatans who take us for granted. And then shit on us on top of it.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 2:21 PM
Enough with the bullshit about Obama not being able to run for president because he was born in Kenya. On his website Fightthesmears you can see a copy of his birth certificate (Hawaii is a state!) and McCain was born in Panama, but you dont hear the left making absurd comments like he's not legally qualified to run for president. The right has so much experience smearing shit around that they could wipe King Kong's ass!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 3:23 PM
Barack Obama is not a legal U.S. natural-born citizen according to the law on the books at the time of his birth, which falls between December 24, 1952, to November 13, 1986.
Federal Law requires that the office of President requires a natural-born citizen if the child was not born to two U.S. Citizen parents. This is what exempts John McCain, though he was born in the US Panama Canal Zone.
US Law very clearly states: "...If only one parent is a U.S. Citizen at the time of one's birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for minimum ten years, five of which must be after the age of 16." That Barack Obama's father was not a U.S. Citizen is a fact.
Obama's mother was only 18 when Obama was born. This means even though she had been a U.S. Citizen for 10 years, (or citizen of Hawaii being a TERRITORY), his mother fails the test for at-least-5-years-prior-to Barack Obama's birth, but-after-age-16.
In essence, mother alone is not old enough to qualify her son for automatic U.S. Citizenship. At most, 2 years elapsed from his mother turning 16 to the time of Barack Obama's birth when she was 18. His mother would have needed to have been 16 + 5 = 21 years old at the time of Barack Obama's birth for him to be a natural-born citizen. Barack Obama was already 3 years old at the time his mother would have needed to be to allow him natural citizenship from his only U.S. Citizen parent. Obama should have been naturalized as a citizen, but that would disqualify him from holding the office.
The Constitution clearly declares: Naturalized citizens are ineligible to hold the office of President. Though Barack Obama was sent back to Hawaii at age 10, any other information does not matter because his mother is the one who must fulfill the requirement to be a U.S. Citzen for 10 years prior to his birth on August 4, 1961, with 5 of those years being after age 16.
Further, Obama may have had to have remained in the USA for some time frame to protect any citizenship he might have had, rather than living in Indonesia. This is very clear cut and a glaring violation of U.S. Election law. I think the Governor Schwarzenegger of California should be very interested in discovering if Obama is allowed to be elected President without being a natural-born U.S. Citizen, since this would set a precedent.
Now, the Obama campaign has placed what it asserts is an actual copy of his "Certificate of Live Birth" which they currently have on their "fight the smears" portion of the official Obama campaign website. You can see it here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/birthcert
The only problems with it are that:
1. There is no signature.
2. There is no state seal and/or no embossment.
3. The certificate number has been redacted.
4. Through careful analysis, it has been determined by experts to be faked, yet the Obama campaign continues to keep it up on the site.
5. A blogger has now admitted that it is a forgery.
In the face of all of this, one would think that the Obama campaign would simply direct Hawaiian authorities to make a certified copy of his birth certificate available for public inspection. That would end this as an issue for him. It would cost a whole $12. But he's not doing that. HMM...
Since he has already posted what he claims is his birth certificate on his campaign website, presumably a signed and certified copy would be the same, right? So what's he hiding?
It would appear that Mr. Obama is praying this issue goes away because he seems to be hanging his hat on what appears to be a forged document.
Ah, the audacity of hope! Time to draft Hillary!!
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 5:46 PM
I'm sure he or his people checked this out or he wouldnt be running. They arent that stupid and making such a longwinded fuss about it and then saying draft Hillary sounds very much like a sore loser. If you and yours dont vote for him out of spite, you'll be screwing yourselves as well as all of us for the next 4 years. I suspect that since most of Hillary's disgruntled supporters are older women that there is a menopausal maniac factor going on here as well as 'mean girls' in general. If this had happened to a bunch of men they would have said oh shit and forgotten about it by now and gotten behind the candidate who DID WIN! You may now call me a sexist pig and get hysterical. I expect it.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 6:57 PM
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp
obama is a citizen and is qualified to be president
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 7:24 PM
I hadn't ever looked into the issue of Obama's elegibility, but the post a few up has peaked my curiosity. So I'll be looking into it. Btw, the snopes.com page was completely useless and didn't answer any of the major claims made.
But anyway, even if we can't be sure that the Obama campaign is sinking, there is little question that it is listing badly. The European tour turned out to be a minor debacle for the senator instead of the definitive coronation as a global leader of great significance it was supposed to be, while the untimely fireworks in Georgia have served to remind even the most starry-eyed political romantic that no amount of rhetorical HopeChange is likely to impress the coldly calculating geopolitical strategists in Moscow, Beijing and Brussels.
Above all, Obama himself has proved to be possessed of a weak and unlikable public persona. His cool is the stylized cool of the poser; it is the diffident posturing that impresses teenage girls, journalists and no one else. He has a skin problem that does not lie in its color, but rather in its lack of thickness; not since Bob Dole has there been a candidate who has been more sensitive or more inclined to view legitimate and substantive criticism as unfair personal attacks. And the Saddleback forum in California unmasked him as a superficial thinker who tends to be caught up in the trivialities.
In all this, I actually can't blame Hillary Clinton for being tempted to derail the Democratic convention this week. It has to be difficult for her to watch Obama's ongoing implosion.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/25/2008 7:39 PM
Am I imagining things or is Theo back her under a different guise? Can't keep away from the men I see to get his jollies.
Anyway, Ewe....I understand your misgivings over Obama. I don't much care for him either, in fact none of them. I'm voting for Obama reluctantly because I don't want a right wing, anti-gay hypocritical family values adulterer giving us another four years of failed Bush policies. I don't expect much from Obama least of all on equality issues but he's all we have right now. He'll get there eventually. He's already told us our vote for him is important. Do you hear that from anyone in the party of hate camp? NO! Will he oppose marriage equality in any other state? NO! McCain and his party will! Obama and others will evolve, McCain won't.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/26/2008 8:19 AM
Nope. A vote for the lesser of two evils is still evil.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/26/2008 12:30 PM
please feel free to vote for whoever you want. That right is not something i want to take away from anyone.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/26/2008 12:54 PM
Vote for who you like, there are only two potential candidates though. I am afraid that McCain has this one, much to my dissapointment. If Obama was the same soul in a white skin, he would be elected, but he is not. At 50 years of age, I can rest assured, sadly, that America will never see a non white male in the oval office in my lifetime. There are lots of "liberals" who would not vote for a black man to save their lives. Instead they will always say "I would vote for a back person, just not this one."
posted by Anonymous, at
8/27/2008 4:12 PM
Here we go. Obama's recent plunge in the polls comes about as the American people actually learn more about him. So now the loony left has to come up with an excuse for why Barack Obama is going to lose in November (which should surprise no one, and it doesn't surprise this Hillary Clinton supporter).
Now, all the reasonable excuses for why he's gonna lose have to be rejected by the loons of course. To them, Obama will not lose because of his inexperience, poor judgment, or far left political views.
No, the real reason Obama will lose, according to the loons, is racism. Thankfully their excuses and accusations are getting old, and even Democrats like myself are growing increasingly sick of it.
Now what I really love about the loons is their inconsistency. I mean, what of the over 90% of the black voters who won't be voting for McCain? By the loons standard, aren't then those blacks racist?
posted by Anonymous, at
8/27/2008 6:56 PM
Anon: 5:46 If what you say is true, is any new federal law retroactive? I ask because even the dead have been given citizenship posthumously.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/30/2008 10:25 AM
and didn't Michael Moore nominate a plant once upon a time for something?
posted by Anonymous, at
8/30/2008 11:22 AM
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