Elections '08 • Media • Presidential Race

It’s Biden! (UPDATED)

August 22, 2008
by Celeste Fremon
34 Comments

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Wooo-hoooo!!!!!!!!!!

CNN has confirmed. (So has AP and NBC and Fox.)

He’s smart, he’s experienced, he isn’t pathologically cautious, he reads as decent, he’s been through a thing or two personally, he can laugh at himself. He genuinely knows foreign policy.

And he’s got a smart, very cool, level-headed and charming school teacher wife.

Best funny, semi-snarky quote of the night about Biden: “He sometimes seems unacquainted with his grammatical friend, Mr. Period.”

SATURDAY UPDATE:

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Out of everything said today in Springfield, the most compelling image is that of Biden taking the Amtrak train home to Wilmington, Delaware every night to be with his family—first as a single dad to raise his boys, then as a husband and father. (According to Google maps that’s a 109 mile trip each way.)


Obama’s strongest line:

“Joe Biden is what so many others pretend to be: a statesman.”

All that stuff about staring down dictators was good too.

34 Comments

  • I found myself liking the prospect of Biden more and more as the speculation rolled on and am very pleased.

    Here’s a good piece on why Biden is a great choice:

    http://tinyurl.com/6q5txk

    There’s a bonus primary-days video in that American Prospect article in which Biden, with an anecdote and an arched eyebrow, casually demolishes the notion of Rudy Giuliani as having any national security credibility before a group of reporters while chewing gum and walking to his car. His “noun, verb, 9/11” line against Giuliani was also brilliant and he was terrific in the debates.

    Aside from his crummy bankruptcy bill vote, which is one of those “protect the scumbags who employ people in my state” deals that Senators are prone to – and a lousy record on crime bills, which won’t hurt him in the election at all among most swing voters – are due to the fact that he’s a combination of very self-confident (generally based on an actual depth of knowledge) and quite genuine. Say what you will about Joe Biden, but the guy’s not a phony. Running against McCain V.2008 and, most likely, Don Draper as VP…I mean Mitt Romney, that’s a real asset. Biden is a “straight talk express” that actually runs on rails.

  • That should have read: “Aside from his crummy bankruptcy bill vote, which is one of those “protect the scumbags who employ people in my state” deals that Senators are prone to – and a lousy record on crime bills, which won’t hurt him in the election at all among most swing voters – MOST OF HIS PERCEIVED PROBLEMS are due to the fact….”

  • I have to say, thinking about the prospect of having Obama/Biden in charge of picking up the pieces after Bush’s “national security” disasters and moving forward on the international front is about as good as it gets in the context of American politics. A great communicator with a fresh face and a very good nuts-and-bolts guy who’s kept close track of the mistakes over the years and knows the cast of characters in the Senate probably as well as LBJ did.

    As that American Prospect article points out, Biden doesn’t let himself for a minute get cowed by the bullshit narrative that GOPers are trustworthy on national security – he calls them out as the midgets, cranks and crackpots that they actually are.

  • Sen. Biden on Obama: I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean….

    Biden had to take the opportunity to run with a clean black man. That’s support!

  • As a Democrat I’m very pleased with the choice of Biden for VP. Finally, finally, we have the correct personalities running in each party that clearly represent each own philosophy and vision for the USA, economically, militarily, judicially, (How many Supreme Court Justices will be replaced in the next 4 to 8 years?), and on domestic policy’s of education, infrastructure repair and replacement, workers rights, freedom from religion, freedom from government spying, national security aka Homeland Security and freedom from fear tactics, and on and on and on.
    I’m pleased that with these candidates, who clearly represent their political parties in their bloodlines and economic positions, that it should be easy for the US voting public to decide on the future of the USA.

    Obama, an offspring of African and Kansas working and middle class upbringing grew up in a multi ethnic atmosphere.

    Joe Bidden, Working class family who through hard work and education became a US Senator who still represents the working person in Congress and in his philosophy.

    For the Republicans we also have the perfect representation.
    John McCain, born into an affluent family and whose father the Admiral made sure he got into the Naval Academy. McCain then married into an extremely wealthy Arizona family and pays taxes (I think) on ten expensive homes across the nation.

    Mitt Romney, son of a Governor and wealthy Mormon family who made a fortune putting together the Salt Lake Winter Olympics a few years back. Romney has the Republican Party’s “Moral and Religious” platform to push including the opposition to abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, ect.

    Let’s get it on!

  • Hey, that text message idea of announcing Obama’s VP was great! People are sure to remember that moment, because it came hours after the media announced it and, best of all, it came at 3:00 in the morning! At least Hillary Clinton was up to answer it and find that it wasn’t her.

  • D.Q. assumes that rich people didn’t work for their wealth. It’s nice to know how he felt about John Kerry’s influence and marrying money.

  • Yea Woody that’s a big reason Kerry lost, he took on and couldn’t shake the image of the ivy league rich guy who married into even more wealth, and was like GW, just another frat boy from the Skull and Bones Society of Capitalist Robber Barons. Bad Choice!

    But now we have two authenticated son’s of the working class against two authenticated son’s of the wealthy class, and don’t give me the old pulled themselves up by the bootstraps crap about McCain and Romney cause it ain’t gonna fly, they were both products of wealthy influential families like the other Republican, Dubya.
    But it’s always humorous to me how the wealthy Corporate Republicans always go into tears and cry Classism when they are attacked for representing their economic class (which they always do),wha wha wha!

    And Woody I’m surprised at how soon you brought up the race card, I sympathize with your plight at being attacked so severely for imagined racist attitudes. Not!

  • Don Q, the xenophobe who calls blacks mayates and changos, lecturing about racism, what a jack-ass. Don Q. has posted some very vile vitriol about blacks, now the former KKK spokesman is voting for a black man, what a jerk.

    Do we need to post more links to Don Q, disgusting vitriol?

  • Hey, D.Q., I didn’t bring up race. Obama started it. But, I’m agreeing with his camp. If I don’t vote for Obama, then I must be a racist. It’s all about white guilt.

    George W. was very different than John Kerry. When you saw W. fishing or hunting, you knew that it was real and that he was a regular guy. When Kerry did it, it was a photo-op with the price tags still on his hunting jacket and shotgun.

    In Obama’s case, certainly he is elitist. But, I’m just a bitter person sitting here with my Bible in hand and my shotgun in the corner. Obama looks down his nose on typical Americans, which made him a good fit within the pseudo-intellectual academic culture–not something becoming for a President.

  • GW a regular guy? C’mon Woody Dubya has made a career out that BS. He’s a rich kid from a wealthy family of New England Robber Barons who went to a private elite Yankee prep school, Yale, skull and bones member in good standing, and the minute he’s out of office will disappear from his brush cutting chores in Crawford and be on the family’s private compound and golf course in Kennebunkport Maine.
    He’s anything but regular.

  • Dear WaJA,

    I honestly don’t care what DQ has said at other sites. As long as he contributes here (which he’s been doing), lets leave the fights from other sites—back at those sites.

    So please stay and how ’bout we talk about the conversation at hand. Okay?

    Thanks.

  • Thanks Celeste, I have promised not to respond to the ridiculous and racist posts of my “stalker fan” and I won’t.
    **********************************************************
    Woody, what are you trying to say here,

    “D.Q., what you say and what you want are not the same things that we see and know.”

    Is this some kind of secret Masonic code?
    Is this a whirling dervish mantra?
    The world has got to know!

  • Got it from the Skull and Bones society.

    What I was referencing is that you are telling us in factual terms how George W. will act when he leaves office, which is not consistent with the way he has led his life. Your perspective is not reality.

    For instance, I never thought for a moment that his hugging of the young girl who lost her mom on 9-11 was an act for a photo-op.

    The Story Behind the Picture (Scroll Down)
    Editorial by CK Rairden
    May 10, 2004

    It started out as a fluke. Lynn Faulkner had been offered an extra ticket to a Bush campaign event by his neighbor Linda Prince. Mr. Faulkner decided to offer it to his 15-year old daughter Ashley who he expected would decline, as she would have to miss some school to attend. But his daughter surprised him. Ashley reminded her dad how four years ago they attended a similar event when then Texas Governor George W. Bush visited the same spot on the campaign trail.

    Ashley remembered attending that event with both her father and her mother Wendy Faulkner. It was raining that day and they all stood in the rain awaiting Governor Bush “eating Triscuit crackers” enjoying the time together and hoping to get a glimpse of the would-be president. Ashley recalled holding her mothers hand as they waited. So she decided to go again this year, but this time her mother could not attend. Wendy Faulkner was murdered on 9/11/01 in the south tower of the World Trade Center. She was there on the 104th floor for a one-day meeting. Ashley decided to miss school in honor and remembrance of her mother and attend the event.

    So the trip was on. Linda Prince, along with Lynn and Ashley Faulkner, were off to the Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon, Ohio for the event. The group arrived early and got a spot close to the front. As the event wound down, the president worked the line in full campaign mode shaking hands and signing autographs. As the president passed the group, Mr. Faulkner got an autograph, and the president continued on until Linda Prince spoke up, “This girl lost her mother on 9/11,” Prince told the president.

    Then everything changed.

    “The president’s entire expression transformed,” Mr. Faulkner told me on Sunday. “He turned and came back against the flow and his eyes locked on Ashley’s. His face showed a man who was no longer the president, he was a father and a husband.” President Bush made his way back to Ashley and he embraced the 15-yeal old young woman. “She snuggled in with the president just like she did when she was a little girl with her dad,” Mr. Faulkner said. “I know it’s hard,” Mr. Faulkner heard the president tell his daughter. “I’m okay,” Ashley told the president. The embrace continued.

    Mr. Faulkner had his Kodak digital camera with him and debated on invading this very private moment between his daughter and the leader of the free world. “For 20-30 seconds the president belonged exclusively to Ashley,” Lynn Faulkner told me. So he decided to capture the moment without invading Ashley and the president’s privacy. He held up his digital camera, not even aiming with his eye and with one click snapped just one picture. It showed in detail the face of a compassionate man who just happens to be the president comforting a young woman who lost her mother in the 9/11 attacks on America.

    Mr. Faulkner told me that he saw tears in his daughter’s eyes, and saw emotion that he hadn’t seen from his daughter in 2 ½ years. Ashley told her dad, “The way he was holding me, with my head against his chest, it felt like he was trying to protect me, he wanted to make sure that I was safe.” That feeling is captured in a very clear way in this moving unscripted photo. It’s the only photo of this special embrace as the press corps had already been ushered back on the bus. And the photo was never meant for publication. All Mr. Faulkner did when he returned home from the event was e-mail it to 15 friends and family. But by the middle of last week, I had received the photo from eight different people. Others were also receiving the photo and forwarding it along. It became an Internet phenomenon, as it was e-mailed around America.

    Mr. Faulkner called the embrace “President Bush’s precious gift to my daughter.” And with his small act of e-mailing that photo to friends and family, the picture can now become a gift to the American people.

    And as sad as the story is the release and publication is a good thing. Disgusting photos coming out of Iraq for the past 10 days have shocked Americans, as they should have. But no longer are the terrible images of 9/11 shown. While the Iraq prison photos have been picked up by the elite media and shown time and again, this touching photo has gone largely ignored by the mainstream media. But the alternative media has made this touching powerful photo one of the most e-mailed photos of last week. The Internet once again took over where the elite media failed. Matt Drudge ran it on May 7th, as did the Page 2 Politics journal, and hundreds of other blogs. Millions have now seen it, but millions more need to. It gives a stark reminder why America is at war with radical Islam and other terrorists around the world that are determined to cause this kind of pain to other American families.

    The images of 9/11 have faded in the minds of far too many Americans. This picture and this family’s riveting story give a stark reminder of why America is at war. Each day around the globe our soldiers are fighting in an attempt to prevent any other event as terrible as the murders that took place on 9/11. Look hard at this picture. See the compassion and sadness on the president’s face. Look at this young woman, see her grief and listen her father’s words. Ashley and her sister Loren just spent their third Mother’s Day without their mother, as did thousands of other children who lost their mothers on 9/11 at the hands of ruthless uncaring terrorists. Imagine yourself in that position.

    Then remember why America is at war, and consider the type of person America should have leading that war.

    You’re right, D.a., in that Bush isn’t “regular.” It took someone special to identify with and comfort that young girl.

  • Thankfully Woody’s post was longer than the word count I’ve imposed on myself in deciding which comments to read.

  • Republican Senator and Vietnam vet Chuck Hagel on Obama’s choice of Biden:

    “Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama. His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century. An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden’s selection is good news for Obama and America.”

  • Thanks, Reg. Don’t know why I didn’t look on YouTube. (I liked to the MSNBC video, but it had no embed code. This is better.)

    Definitely worth watching, gaffes and all.

  • I’ll say the introduction was good. It was scripted, uninspiring, and contained a major mistake when Obama introduced Biden as the next President.

    I have no major problems with Biden, except that he’s going to have to adapt to Obama’s agenda, which is far too liberal for America.

  • Thanks for the reality check Woody, I never really appreciated the soft sentimental side of Dubya.

    But insight should be a lifelong objective

  • Why isn’t WitnessLA on this list? Why is Zuma Dogg ranked higher than a Senior Fellow from USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism? Congratulations to Woody for being in the top 20.

    California’s Most Influential Political blogs
    According to BlogNetNews.com

    1 Red County
    2 Mayor Sam’s Sister City
    3 California Progress Report
    4 LA Observed
    5 Fresno Bee Opinion Talk
    6 Orange Punch
    7 Patterico’s Pontifications
    8 Liberal OC
    9 Calitics
    10 Orange Juice
    11 LA Daily Blog.com
    12 Politics in the Zeros
    13 Total Buzz
    14 The RBC
    15 Tammy Bruce
    16 The Bolsavik: All Viet, all the time
    17 Greater Orange News
    18 California Conservative
    19 Woody’s Woundup
    20 Left In SF
    ‘

  • He’s gathered some manners over the yrs. We’ve taught him that. He’s learned ever so tediously, that the opinions he pulls from his derriere are not gospel. Enjoy his congenial reparte’ while you can, because soon enough he’ll morph into a nuisance that rivals athlete’s foot in its potential for irritation. Ah yes, now there’s a thread that needs explored: comparing dq to a fungus.

  • “Thanks Celeste, I have promised not to respond to the ridiculous and racist posts of my “stalker fan” and I won’t.”

    *****************************

    Of course he won’t respond, because there is no justifiable response to his own vitriol and racism. Deny , deny, deny.

  • lost rankings, thanks but to avoid confusion, Woody’s Woundup is not mine and that guy is too liberal for me, as is Ann Coulter.

  • “…Considering no one ever posts on zuma dogg’s blog, highly suspicious.”

    Zuma’s blog is like what an “A” ticket got you at Disneyland years ago. Thanks but no thanks. Just didn’t draw in the tourists like the Matterhorn. I’m sorry, but it lacks any pazzaz.

  • Jumping willikers, your right, Zuma’s blog being in the top #20 with little or no comments is indeed open to doubt, is suspect, and plenty slippery honey? I know I would be mistrustful and wary of these extravagant claims for blogs that are met with incredulity by knowledgeable bloggers.

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