Assuming the Senate will remain near-perfectly divided after November, the tie-breaking vote could become pretty important. Having a Veep who knows how to play the Senate’s games can’t hurt.
One of the talking heads on television suggested that by picking Biden, who doesn’t mince words, Obama essentially created a good cop/bad cop team - with Obama able to remain above the fray while Biden slings the mud back at the Republican mud slingers.
I think Biden will be very helpful in getting Obama elected. I don’t know how Obama has kept his cool when those stupid attack ads keep running and (sadly) working to narrow his lead in the polls. I think Biden will be more than happy to go on television and rip into the Republican bullshit with gusto, and fling some factoids right back at them.
And PLEASE have McCain pick Romney as his VP! Biden will be able to slam dunk Romney in any debate, and still have room to kick some sand in McCain’s face while doing it.
Actually, that was in 1988.
Sorry for not being clearer. I did not intend it rhetorically. It was a serious question about the the administration having an experienced political operator as President of the Senate. The consensus seems to be that it will prove useful.
Will Biden continue running for his Senate seat? Will he terminate that campaign and will there be enough time for someone else to run for that seat?
I don’t know the answer, but this daily kos link attempts to answer your question.
Biden will be running for both his Senate seat and the Vice Presidency simultaneously. Delaware is a state that allows that.
That would be a mistake. Lieberman’s decision to do that cost Gore a bit of credibility 8 years ago. A candidate can not admit any possibility of losing, no matter what he thinks privately.
It is also helpful to have a President of the Senate who does not drop f-bombs on US Senators.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/b/2004/06/25/cheney-to-leahy-go-fk-yourself.htm
Told my uncle about the choice of Biden. His reply? “Great, so we’ll have a good president when some redneck shoots Barack.” If this was all they were waiting for…
Why?
Yeah, why? Did that make more people think Cheney was crude and childish than the number who thought it showed he was plain-speaking and tough? Depends on your affiliation, most likely.
I’m a democrat and I thought it was plain speaking and tough.
I’m a Democrat too and I thought it was all of the above.
Well, it depends on the circumstances. I don’t recall the specifics of Cheney’s f-bomb, but I don’t doubt that there are times when some Senators need to be told to fuck off.
The Obama campaign needs to be careful here about using Biden as an ‘attack dog’. I know you guys are all chortling with glee at the thought of Biden tearing a strip off McCain or his VP nominee, but there are two risks here:
The first is that it damages Obama’s brand. You seem to think that as long as he personally doesn’t go for the throat, he can keep his ‘clean, high minded campaign’ pledge while Biden does his dirty work. But it doesn’t work that way. Biden’s part of the campaign. If Biden goes too far, it’ll be Obama that the apology is demanded from, and Obama will be forced to reprimand his VP candidate. Or he won’t do it, in which case he’ll be accused of letting other people do his dirty work for him while be pretends to be above the fray. In other words, I don’t think he gets a pass on his claim to be about a ‘new style of campaign’ just because he assigned the old style to someone else.
The second risk is that Biden will go too far. Biden has a history of teeing off even when he knows he shouldn’t. He’s also got a huge ego. If he gets told, “go get 'em!”, and he starts reading gleeful accounts of his latest put-down in the press, he may go a bridge too far and really screw up. He’s done it before.
I’m sure Biden will be the go-to guy when the going gets rough. But it has to be played very subtly. They both have to claim to be running a clean campaign, and when Biden gets tough, it’s got to be in the context that the other side has gone too far and he’s retaliating out of necessity, and not because he wants to. That’s part of Obama’s message, and going off-message hurts if any member of the campaign does it.
McCain might even try to goad Biden. Although I think they have respect for each other, and that might keep the attacks from getting too far out of hand. But both men have pretty bad tempers, so this could be an interesting race. Maybe there’s even a risk there that Obama looks marginalized if too old heavyweights of the Senate start duking it out with each other.
Meh. McCain threw out his promise to keep on the high road a long time ago. And that doesn’t keep him from saying “OMG Obama said he’d be high minded and then he DARED run this ad!!” each time something less than glowing is said about McCain.
Having Biden doing some real work won’t make McCain cry about how hypocritical Obama is any more or less nor will it have any effect on McCain running smear ads as often as possible.
Biden doesn’t go too far, though. He’s tough but he’s not nasty. He can hammer an opponent on policy in a straight forward, memorable way but without being unfair or personal. Look at the way he skewered Guiliani’s message. he effectively reduced Rudy to self-parody with a single quip, but there was nothing anyone would think was inappropriate or vicious about it. It was completely about Guiliani’s own message, nothing personal or ad hominem.
I’m not sure Sam Stone’s concern about the Obama brand is warranted. Demanding apologies was shown to be ineffective in the last few campaigns when it seemed to be the Democrats’ only response to attacks. As for Biden “going too far” (where would that be, exactly?) it’s hard to believe that the Obama campaign, competent as it is, hasn’t already worked out how to manage that.
It’s fairly unlikely that the Senate will be near-perfectly divided after this election. Even conservative projections have the Democrats picking up seats in NH, VA and NM.
I’m just saying there’s a risk. Biden is fully capable of nailing McCain to the wall if he gets the chance, without going too far. As Diogenes says, Biden’s good at the sarcastic quip or a clever rejoinder, without seeming mean-spirited. But sometimes he does go too far. He’s just got to be careful. McCain has a lot of respect with the American people, even if they don’t vote for him. But a lot of people will get their backs up if they feel like he’s being disrespected.