Biden His Time, Or,..D'oh-Bama Throws in the Towel!

Obama Picks Sen. Joe Biden for Running Mate
by FOXNews.com
Saturday, August 23, 2008

Barack Obama is preparing to appear on stage Saturday afternoon with his running mate for the first time after announcing early in the morning that he had picked Delaware Sen. Joe Biden for the second spot on the Democratic presidential ticket.

The announcement ended days of frenzied speculation about who his vice president pick would be, with Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh remaining strong contenders as late as Friday evening.

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s close rival throughout the Democratic primaries, also had been in the running for a spot on the ticket. She was not considered a leading candidate for the job, though Obama’s campaign still may need to overcome the lingering bitterness some of her supporters feel over the tenor and outcome of the primary race to court them in the general election.

Sen. Clinton was among the first to applaud Obama on Saturday for his choice.

“In naming my colleague and friend Senator Joe Biden to be the Vice Presidential nominee, Senator Obama has continued in the best traditions for the vice presidency by selecting an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant,” Clinton said in a written statement. “Senator Biden will be a purposeful and dynamic vice president who will help Senator Obama both win the Presidency and govern this great country.”

Former Clinton Communications Director and FOX News contributor Howard Wolfson said that, after Clinton, he thought Biden was “the best possible pick that Barack Obama could have made.”

“I think he brings a wealth of experience and he is a great campaigner and I think he is a very fine pick,” Wolfson told FOX News on Saturday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also expressed strong support for Biden.

“Joe Biden has been fighting his entire career for the change that Sen. Obama champions,” Reid said in a written statement. “He is a dedicated family man who has been an effective chairman of both the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary Committees, has been a sage voice on many of the toughest foreign policy issues of our time, and has long been a strong advocate for protecting American families and making our communities safer.”

Meanwhile, John McCain, Obama’s Republican rival for the presidency, plans to call Biden sometime Saturday today to congratulate his long-time senate colleague on his placement on the opposing ticket, a McCain aide told FOX News.

Biden, 65, has twice sought the White House, and is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.

Across more than 30 years in the Senate, he has served at various times not only as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee but also as head of the Judiciary Committee, with its jurisdiction over anti-crime legislation, Supreme Court nominees and Constitutional issues.

Obama’s pick balances his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues. The campaign made the announcement on its Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.”

The two are scheduled to appear at 2 p.m. CDT in Springfield, Ill., outside the Old State Capital.

No sooner had word spread of his selection than McCain’s campaign unleashed its first attack. Spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement that Biden had “denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing — that Barack Obama is not ready to be president.”

As evidence, Republicans cited an ABC interview from August 2007, in which Biden said he would stand by an earlier statement that Obama was not ready to serve as president.

Obama’s decision leaked to the media several hours before his aides planned to send a text message announcing the running mate, negating a promise that people who turned over their phone numbers would be the first to know who Obama had chosen. The campaign scrambled to send the text message after the leak, sending phones buzzing at the inconvenient time of just after 3 a.m. on the East coast.

Biden slowly emerged as Obama’s choice across a long day and night of political suspense as other contenders gradually fell away.

Several aides to Clinton said the Obama campaign had never requested financial or other records from her. In addition to Kaine and Bayh, other finalists in the veep sweepstakes were Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Texas Rep. Chet Edwards.

Among those on the short list, Biden brought the most experience in defense or foreign policy — areas in which Obama fares relatively poorly in the polls compared with Republican Sen. John McCain.

While the war in Iraq has been supplanted as the campaign’s top issues by the economy in recent months, the recent Russian invasion of Georgia has returned foreign policy to the forefront.

In addition to foreign policy experience, Biden, a native of Scranton, Pa., has working-class roots that could benefit Obama, who lost the blue-collar vote to Clinton during their competition for the presidential nomination.

Biden was elected to the Senate at the age of 29 in 1972, but personal tragedy struck before he could take office. His wife and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed when a tractor-trailer broad-sided her station wagon.

Biden took his oath of office for his first term at the hospital bedside of one of his sons.

Biden is seeking a new Senate term in the fall. There was no immediate word whether he intended to change plans as he reaches for national office.

“For Obama supporters, this is like finding out from your neighbor instead of your sister that she’s engaged — not how you want or expect the news to be delivered,” Silberman said.

Biden dropped out of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination after a poor finish in the Iowa caucuses, but not before he talked dismissively of joining someone else’s ticket.

“I am not running for vice president,” he told FOX News in an August 2007 interview. “I would not accept it if anyone offered it to me. The fact of the matter is I’d rather stay as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee than be vice president.”

He had stumbled on his first day in the race, apologizing for having described Obama as “clean.” Months later, Obama spoke up on Biden’s defense, praising him during a campaign debate for having worked for racial equality.

It was Biden’s second try for the White House. The first ended badly in 1988 when he was caught lifting lines from a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

In the decades since, he become a power in the Senate, presiding over confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court nominees as well as convening hearings to criticize President Bush’s handling of the Iraq War.

Biden voted to authorize the war, but long ago became one of the Senate’s surest critics of the conflict. Ironically, perhaps, his son, Beau, attorney general of Delaware, is due to spend a tour of duty in Iraq beginning this fall with his National Guard unit.

Obama worked to keep his choice secret, although he addressed the issue broadly during the day in an interview.

“Obviously, the most important question is: Is this person ready to be president?” Obama told “The Early Show” on CBS. Second, he said, was: “Can this person help me govern? Are they going to be an effective partner in creating the kind of economic opportunity here at home and guiding us through some dangerous waters internationally?”

And, he added: “I want somebody who is going to be able to challenge my thinking and not simply be a yes person when it comes to policymaking.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


The TrekMedic reports:

And the red wave washes in these replies:

From Save the GOP:



Hot Air blows in with:

AP: Biden choice demonstrates lack of confidence; Update: Plagiarism flashbacks
posted at 8:20 am on August 23, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

Ron Fournier makes the obvious analysis with Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as running mate. The AP’s political analyst says the move acknowledges Obama’s weakness in experience and foreign policy, and shows the pressure coming from Democrats worried about losing the election:

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.

He picked a 35-year veteran of the Senate — the ultimate insider — rather than a candidate from outside Washington, such as Govs. Tim Kaine of Virginia or Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas; or from outside his party, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; or from outside the mostly white male club of vice presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t even make his short list.

The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn’t beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden pick is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.

It’s an admission that Obama’s inexperience has finally begun worrying voters, and not just Democratic power brokers. There really is no other way to see an addition of Biden to the ticket. Obama can’t be worried about carrying Delaware, after all; it’s as safe a state that Democrats have. Nor does Biden have a natural national constituency, as his own flop of a presidential campaign proved this cycle.

The Biden choice is an act of desperation borne of a summer-long catastrophe. There isn’t any other reason for Obama to choose a 35-year veteran of the Senate with as long a history of gaffes and flat-out dishonesty as his second on the campaign for Hope and Change. In fact, I can’t wait for writers to twist themselves into knots to avoid the cardinal sin of writing, plagiarism, which Biden committed more than once, as Jim Geraghty recounted in 2003:

“Much like Gary Hart, he’s identified more with the party’s presidential past than its present or future,” said political scientist Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia. “He was, after all, forced out by a mini-scandal which would come up again.”

In 1987, Biden quit the Democratic primary race early after the revelation that he had delivered, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also hammered Biden’s image: a serious plagiarism incident from his law-school years, boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event, and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians.

Now Obama, who supposedly represents a new brand of politics, has instead hitched his wagon to an old-time pol who has trouble coming up with his own words when he campaigns. That’s desperation, and what’s more, it’s obvious desperation. And in politics, just as in dating, desperation is not an aphrodisiac.

NEPALibWatch is on a PUMA Watch!

Gunservatively echoes Ed Morrisey's words!

and,....Tony Phyrillas can't believe it!