Joe Biden Speaks

Every now and then he manages to get from one end of the street to the other without rhetorically flinging himself into traffic or head-first through a plate-glass window and landing in a three-tiered wedding cake. Without going on a tangent that ends up in a different Zip code from his original point. You hold your breath watching him do it, waiting for the disaster.

Or maybe it's just a matter of having a good editor.

Either way, and speaking as someone with a 50-50 chance to vote for a Democrat next year, there's good sense in these words:

When he asks groups of Democrats if they think the American people are stupid because they elected George W. Bush twice, most respond that, yes, they do, he said. He said he thinks that attitude is a real problem for the Democrats, who fail to understand how smart and pragmatic the American people really are.

... “It’s not even so much they don’t trust, which is a piece of it,” he said. It’s that they think that “the way to win is the Bill Clinton triangulation and the Karl Rove angering.”

“It’s the thesis that you go to your base because people don’t vote. Well, why don’t they vote?” he asked. He said he thinks people don’t vote because they’re tired of the way politicians treat them.

He said Democrats would do better if they stopped dividing the electorate by playing to their base and instead brought people together. He criticized the left wing of his party for demonizing the rich and Republicans.

“Rich folks are as patriotic as poor folks, but we don’t talk that way,” he said.

The Democratic frontrunners err by running what he calls a 20+5 state strategy to win the general election, he said. They want to win the same 20 blue states the party always wins, and five more. It’s a plan to make a play for Ohio, Florida and other tossup states “and hope you draw to an inside straight.”

“I don’t want to be President if that’s the way I have to win, because I can’t govern that way,” he said. He said that as President he would hope to have enough red state support to get his legislation through Congress.

And I bet he thought that up all on his own.

Playing With Fire

[Posted by reader_iam]

Joe Biden refers to the Yearly Kos Convention as "the Daily Kos thing," which blooper doesn't escape scathing notice. As always, Matador Joe's timing is impeccable, what with the convention coming up at the beginning of August and his planning to attend and all. I mean, talk about waving a red flag! (Clumsily, too.)

Listen to yourself, Joe:

[Q:] Do you think in the era of YouTube and video cellphones, you can get away with being Joe Biden? ...
[A:] The answer is probably not. ...

***

Also, partly for the record and partly because I can't resist: MBNA, as a corporation, is no more, having been bought out by Bank of America. Might need to update the snark. Only sayin'.

Hat tip, Memeorandum.

What More Reason Do You Need?

[Posted by reader_iam]

Chris at the Cynical-C Blog has compiled the ultimate list of who and what is to blame for what happened at VA Tech. My personal three favorites on the list are Bill Gates, Collective Soul's song "Shine" (lyrics entirely benign, by the way) and Republicans Since 1994, the latter just because it's the apparent theory of good old Joe, who, by the way, is in no danger of being dethroned anytime soon from his airy position by Barack Obama. I was going to do a whole blog post (complete with previous gaffes) about Biden's statement, which I saw on Newsmax earlier today, but Chris pretty much has it covered just by including the story on his list. Here's the nut(s) of it, though:

Biden said Republicans have created an environment that brings bad things to the United States.

"I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what's gone down at Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus. Take a look. This didn't happen accidentally, all these things," he said.

That's my Joe! (I've followed his career for something like 35 years, remember.) Has he outdone himself this time? Could be.

When, I wonder, will my once and, probably, future senator at last run out of feet to put in his mouth?

***

It's been a helluva long week, folks, hasn't it? A signature line from a regular character on this TV show (see 2:12) has been running through my head all day. Seems appropriate.

Run, Joe, Run

[posted by Callimachus]

In a move sure to delight my co-blogger, Joe Biden has offered the nation his services to "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof."

Memos to Demos

Do better than this.

Sen. Joseph Biden says he can hold his own in a 2008 presidential primary against Democratic contenders from the South, noting that his home state of Delaware was a "slave state."

Biden dismissed the notion that he was a "Northeastern liberal" who would have a poor showing in the South against other likely contenders such as Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee.

... "You don't know my state," he said. "My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state."

The sad thing is, Biden is the kind of Democrat who, theoretically, ought to appeal to me. He has education, aspirations of statesmanship, historical sensibilities, big-picture visionary capabilities, and theoretically he is possessed of a natural intelligence.

Then something like this. Oh well; the same laundry list could be applied to Newt Gingrich.

Some about slavery in Delaware here. It is an interesting historical sidelight, but not terribly relevant to a national election in 2006.

More Foot In Mouth For Biden

Betcha the senator wishes he could eat these words:

“You cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Video here.

Ah, Joe, you never disappoint me. Think of all the fun you--not to mention the press! and us!--could have if you were president.

(Hmmm. Looking at this and my previous two posts, it occurs to me that I really shouldn't blog hungry. Wonder if my inlaws keep any doughnuts around here... .)

Surely No One's Surprised By This One

Joe Biden's candidacy is a go for 2008.

I can't help thinking of Joe's last run for presidency, back in the '80s, when I was still in my 20s, living in Delaware and still following politics there closely. (As I had, by the way, since the very early '70s, initially by deliberate parental design, one offshoot of which meant I first shook hands with Joe Biden during one of his retail-politics appearances in his very first Congressional campaign.) Despite my familiarity, by the late '80s, with Biden's propensity for pontification over pointedness, I thought it was rather cool to have someone from the tiny First State vying for the Big Brass Ring, and had his candidacy not fallen prey to the ruthless political edit-delete button due to a controversy over his misbegotten choice of (Neil Kinnock's)**** words--natch!--I might very well have voted for him, then.

I got a kick out of this quote, from the News Journal article:

"I'm running for president -- flat out," he said, adding his party should learn to be more blunt.

Blunt? Um, O.K. Regardless of whether that prescription is true or not, it sounds wrong, somehow, coming from Sen. Biden, who is still stuck back on the concept of "brief," the perfect example of which was his substitution of bloviation for serious questions back in the Alito hearings. It's hard to hear "blunt" in the whirlpool of words that seems to be Joe's first instincts.

(By the way, Lord knows I can relate and understand to that human weakness; brevity sure as hell is not the soul of my, um, er, wit, especially verbally and in person, and never has been--more's the pity. But then, I'm not planning on running for local dogcatcher, much less a party leader of any sort, much less the office of POTUS.)

As another trivial aside, I know that Cal posted the results of a weighted quiz he'd taken, a few weeks back (the details aren't important enough for me to go back), relating to how one would rank a dozen-ish potential Dem candidates. Once the rating was plugged in, and based on what other people had done, as I understood it (or at least remember understanding it, without checking), you got back the result of The Potential Democratic Candidate For You.

Well! I nearly laughed myself silly--as I discussed with Cal offline--when my result ironically came back as, of course, Sen. Joe, and this despite the fact that 1) he wasn't anywhere in the top half of my ranking, and 2) I've been over him for ye, ye, these many years, though, I'll admit, without any particularly passionate rancor.

Yet, here's the thing: We could do far worse. Because the Democrats can, and might, in terms of putting forth a candidate, and so, by golly, can, and might, the Republicans.

Helluva thing, ain't it?

****Though I can't find it online (but maybe can hunt it down on microfiche, back East this summer, if I'm so inclined--a questionable proposition), I seem to remember there being some real questions about perspective over the charge of plagiarism on Biden's part, at least with regard to speechifying issues, most specifically having to do with whether Kinnock himself hadn't taken license with the words of bygone literary figures, a rather time-honored tradition. Does anyone else remember this? You can consider this a bleg, if you like.