So, Joe Biden is Obama’s pick.
Good? Bad? Average?
I tend to think it’s a very average pick, which will make no major impact on his end result.
Your thoughts?
I think it’s a bad choice.
The 1988 Neal Kinnock speech-borrowing can be gotten past. His comments about Obama during the campaign were obviously put behind him.
I’m just not sure it’s worth the gamble for what could come out of his overly-verbose pie hole during the rest of the campaign.
And where’s my freaking text message?
Isn’t Biden notorious for plagiarizing some British politician’s speech?
I just read his Wikipedia entry. He seems boring, bland, white-bread and totally uninteresting, probably because he’s had no real life outside of politics. I took a brief look at his political positions. Predictably, he’s as viciously anti-gun as Obama, so I’m going to get my assault weapons before the coming election. I was hoping for Bill Richardson but he had no hope to begin with because he was too fat.
Blah.
Sigh…much as I hate to say it, he’s lost. Dammit.
Why do you say that?
Very poor choice if true. Biden is bright, but he is the absolute God-King of high self regard, and self aggrandizing smarminess, plus he is an admitted liar re embellishing his personal history. He is a polarizing figure. This will not go well for Obama.
Biden is known for talking a lot. Wordy. Gabby. Not uninteresting, but highly verbose.
He’s also known for being occasionally more fiery and direct than your average politician. Not elegant like Obama; more snarly. Not all the time, but when the mood strikes him.
Obama needs a surrogate attack dog, someone to go snapping after McCain & Friend, in order to free himself to stay cleanly above the mud. Biden’s that guy.
The important thing to remember is, there was no great pick available. There were a number of not-so-good ranging to downright-awful. Obama had to balance, with each prospect, a lot of positive and a lot of negative. Biden’s a marginal net positive, I think, for the campaign, which at this point is all that matters.
astro pretty much nailed what I was thinking, Argent Towers.
**Cervaise ** makes a good point with regards to the attack dog comment, but I still believe that Biden is truly a negative and will only hurt Obama’s chances.
As I said in another thread, I don’t think VPs do much to sway voters. Obama has something of a problem with the Biden pick. He’s the most inside-the-beltway guy in the running, which dilutes the change meme (which I thought was stupid to run on, but it’s worked so far). But the positive is that he’s foreign-policy savvy, occasionally witty (I think his one-word answer during the debates about his famed verbosity was one of the funniest things I’ve seen this campaign).
I expect Biden’s gaffes, the “clean, articulate” description of Obama, Kinnock-gate, and so on to get a lot of run in the next few days.
Overall, it’s a good pick, though I think Obama could have sewn up the election by picking Clinton. Nobody can cast doubt on Biden’s experience and so on. But how long until someone says, “Hey, shouldn’t Biden be the president and Obama be the running mate?”
Last thought, the way this is unfolding - that Clinton was never vetted or consulted regarding the VP slot - is not going to sit well with many voters. Obama said that she would be on anyone’s shortlist, including his, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what happened.
If we’re willing to trust Barack Obama to be our President, to trust him to make, in many cases, life or death decisions on our behalf; if we’re going to trust him to negotiate with world leaders, to make wise choices for Supreme Court Justice nominations, to guide national policy in a better direction, then we darn well better be willing to trust him to have made the best possible choice for a Vice-Presidential running-mate, and to have a plan for how to work it to his and the party’s advantage. Stop being such Negative Nellies! 
Obama may have sewn up the Hillary supporters, but even if Biden *might * cost Obama the election, I can guarantee you Hillary would *absolutely * have cost him the election. Hell… I’d think twice about voting for him if he chose Hillary.
This board seems to seriously underestimate Clinton’s appeal. 18 million people did vote for her. Not to mention that she brings semiautomatic weapons to the knife fight.
Nothing against Joe Biden, but I thought Obama should have picked Gen. Wesley Clark. Eloquent, military experience, not polarizing.
I agree with taters. I’ll vote for him anyway, but I think Obama is going to lose.
Wesley Clark would have made a spectacular drag queen when he was younger.
I guess I’m in the minority in that I think he’s a great choice.
He’s one of the best foreign policy guys in Congress. Better than McCain even. He’s an effective attack dog (I like his verbosity and directness, and I think Obama needs an enforcer out there on the ice). He’s qualified to be President. He’s somebody who won’t be in awe of Barack and will have no problem telling him if he’s fucking something up.
He’s also a genuine blue collar, working class guy. Grew up lower middle class in Pennsylvania, has never been rich. He’s never owned a home in Washington, but has taken the train to work from Delaware every day for 30 years. He’s also Catholic. He’s somebody who can speak to and relate to those working class Hillary voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania (where he’s actually from) without faking it. It’s not even a question of remembering his roots because he never left those roots.
The gaffes? I honestly don’t think they hurt him. People get it that he can be a motormouth who can make silly verbal mistakes, but I think they also get that he’s basically a guileless, straightalking guy. Besides, McCain is a gaffe machine too and both McCain and Biden are pikers compared to the current resident of the White House, so I don’t think it’s really all that significant.
I have been re-thinking my Biden=bad post and even if I’m not a big Biden fan, like a ripe cheese he does bring a odor/level of experience to the fray that Obama desperately needs.
I have to say, I don’t think the majority of American voters - even the blue collar ones - genuinely care if the candidate is rich or whatever. I think a lot of people, subconsciously or not, want someone that they know is part of an elite, to rule over them. The people who got Bush I elected didn’t mind that he was from an oil-rich Connecticut family. He was able to fake the Texan cowboy jive and that’s all that counted. A candidate’s superficial exterior seems to be more important to voters than what he actually is.
It could have been worse. The only problem I have with him is his smirk. He is a smart guy but the ollie north inquisition was simply grandstanding.
I think that the more people see of Biden during the campaign and in the VP debate, the more they’re going to end up liking him. As trite as it sounds, he’s one of those guys who really does seem like a guy you’d like to have a beer with. He’s not a snob, he has a sense of humor and he could probably tell some great, uncensored stories about people in Washington.
The smirk is a relic of an facial exercise he used to overcome a childhood stuttering problem.