16 Things to Ponder in Denver

Reasons Joe Biden is a bad choice for Vice President:

(1) Almost anyone else on the rumored VP short list would have been a better choice: Senator and former Governor from Indiana Evan Bayh, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, and Texas Congressman Chet Edwards. We say that with confidence and don’t even know who that Edwards is.

(2) Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice. Barack does not need Hillary Clinton but he does need her voters. It is hard to see how Biden helps, particularly when in his first speech as presumptive VP nominee he describes his wife Jill as “drop dead gorgeous” and adds “she also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem.” Can you be any more patronizing to women voters? Word is that Hillary wasn’t even officially vetted for the VP slot. Yes, you can be more patronizing.

(3) It is going to take all of Hillary Clinton’s skill to prevent her delegates from revolting on the floor of the convention in Denver. They want to put her name in nomination for President. They may also want to put her name in nomination for Vice President. And Hillary isn’t going to get any credit for the hard work of tamping that down. Beware the puma, also known as a cougar, a large wild cat native to the mountains around Denver.

(4) Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner would have been a better choice and may have turned Barack down. Same for Virginia Senator Jim Webb, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Warner will be giving the keynote address in Denver.

(5) Barack spent the summer going out on campaign dates with Hillary Clinton and flirting with his VP short list and others. The problem is he was also flirting with the voters in those states. Indiana has already gone back from the blue state to red state column in the polls. Ohio is also back in the red state column. Expect the “tie” in the Virginia polls to evaporate. Nobody likes a flirt.

(6) Name one state that Biden is going to help Obama win. His home state of Delaware? Obama was already going to win Delaware. Pennsylvania? Hillary Clinton would have helped him win Pennsylvania.

(7) They’ll call this the “never was really even a lawyer” ticket. Barack graduated from Law School in 1991, published his first book in 1995, and got elected to the Illinois legislature in 1996. He never really had a real job, which we admire very much except not in our candidates for President. Joe Biden graduated from law school in 1968, was admitted to the bar in 1969, and was elected to the United States Senate just shy of his 30th birthday in 1972 (barely 30 when sworn in accordance with the Constitution). He also never really had a real job.

(8) They’ll call this the “prep school ticket.” Joe Biden went to Archmere Academy where tuition for the 2008-2009 school year is $18,450. Barack Obama went to Punahou School where tuition is $16,675 for the 2008-2009 school year. Neither supports tuition vouchers to help middle and working class parents send their kids to private school too. Maybe they know their private schools would just raise their tuition to keep the riff-raff out.

(9) They’ll call this the “plagiarism ticket.” Barack Obama took some flak this past spring when passages in his speeches were discovered to be similar to speeches by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Joe Biden was forced to drop his own first presidential bid in September 1987 when his speechwriters were caught feeding him material from British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock.

(10) They’ll call this the Obama bin Biden ticket, which isn’t any less fair than "General Petraeus or General Betray Us."

(11) We liked that Barack Obama had been consistently against the Iraq war, and had the guts to say so from the very beginning. We know why George W. Bush and the Republican Party supported the Iraq war. We don’t know why Democrats like Joe Biden and John Kerry supported the war, and then were nowhere to be seen after they had helped get us into it. You sold us that it was bipartisan, and then for us it was “where did everybody go?” Joe Lieberman stayed with us, and you punished him for that. Hillary Clinton stayed with us, and you punished her. We punished John Kerry. What makes you think we won’t punish Joe Biden too?

(12) Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres and lebensraum. Biden’s one big contribution to resolving the threat of civil war in Iraq was a proposal splitting Iraq in three so that Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis could have "breathing room in their own regions” (this page seems to have been yanked from Biden’s web site while this was being edited, but we found the cached page). His plan would have undoubtedly forced minorities from the other groups in each of those regions to move to their assigned region, ethnic cleansing in other words. Should we wonder if Biden is plagiarizing “breathing room” from Mein Kampf? This is not 1938.

(13) I took note watching the Saddlebrook debate last weekend when Barack Obama singled out as unqualified Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, only the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court. I don’t think the public has entirely forgotten that Joe Biden was the guy who ran the circus called hearings designed to smear Clarence Thomas and embarrass him into withdrawing his nomination. And I remember Joe Biden’s “clean” remark in the 2008 primary campaign which seemed to insult not only Barack Obama, but also Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. What will Karl Rove do with that? Maybe he’ll take his cue from Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan on that spring episode of 30 Rock: “Black people, don't vote! Just don't do it!”

(14) The political pros say the VP choice is the first Presidential decision. I’m afraid with this choice that Barack has decided to abandon his progressive message of hope and change.

(15) The political pros also say people don’t vote for a VP choice. Barack has to hope they don’t vote against one either.

(16) Remember John Kerry, Al Gore, Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, and Adlai Stevenson? They made poor choices for VP too.