I’m still against Biden. It goes against Obama’s “Change” theme. Biden has been in the Senate forever and is the ultimate insider. There has got to be plenty of votes he doesn’t want to defend as well as times he’s voted for something before voting against it.
Also, I worry about him getting bogged down in Senatespeak when he goes up against McCain’s choice in the debates.
I’m not really worried about Neil Kinnock and the campaign speech. That is 20 years old.
He adds foreign policy experience? Well, maybe. But, I just wonder how many people really sit down and think about things like that? Did anyone think, “Well, Bush is inexperienced in foreign policy having only been governor of Texas. But, he’s picked Cheney so that makes him OK?”
Biden seems like another year 2000 Lieberman choice. Lieberman was supposed to insulate Gore against the Clinton sex scandal. Bill Clinton’s sex scandal did not affect the 2000 race at all. However, Lieberman being uninspiring may very well have. If Gore picked Bob Graham, Florida is his and so is the White House.
Yeah, actually, I think it helped him a lot. Bush was probably an unusual case, but even people who liked him sometimes admitted he was green - but when he started announcing that Cheney was his VP pick and Powell was going to be part of his team, it helped win people over by convincing them that the experience of those aides would give him the expertise he needed.
I think it did, but in the exactly opposite manner than most people think. I think if Gore hadn’t been such a Miss Prissy-pants over the whole thing and had associated himself more with Clinton instead of running away from him like he had airborne gonnorhea or something he probably would have had a much larger margin over Bush and we’d be saying farewell to President Gore in January. In this fantasy scenario, Lieberman had been replaced in 2004 with someone else. Anyone else.
As much as I like Bayh, he’s got a problem. The governor of Indiana is a Republican (and it looks like that will still be the case come January.) So if Bayh resigns his Senate seat, it will go to a Republican, which is bad.
Better not be Nunn. As I’ve said, I still haven’t forgiven him for pulling his Orval Faubus and standing in the barracks door when Clinton tried to remove the prohibition against gays in the military completely. Thanks to Nunn, we’ve had the disaster that is Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (which is not the improvement that it seemed in 1993). I’d have to hold my nose to vote for that ticket, even with Obama at the top.
Sam Nunn. I’m sure plenty on the left dislike him. But Obama doesn’t need to win over the left - he could pick Dracula as his running mate, and the left would still hold their noses and pull the lever for him instead of McCain. He needs to win over the center, and Sam Nunn is a man of the center. But most importantly, Sam Nunn has probably the best record on defense and security as any Democrat who has served in the last 40 years. He’s a real heavyweight guy, and Obama could use some gravitas in this area right now.
The big risk with Nunn is that he might make Obama’s resume look weak in comparison. Picking Nunn runs the risk of people asking, “Why isn’t he the presidential candidate, and Obama the VP candidate?”
Joe Biden. Fairly strong on defense. Long resume. And so far, it seems like a consensus pick. But I think he’d actually be a poor nominee. For one thing, it’s hard enough for a Senator to win an election - having two Senators on the ticket would not be a smart move. Biden’s got a long legislative history, which will give the opposition lots to pick at. And he’s got terminal foot-in-mouth disease.
Evan Bayh. To me, this is the smartest pick. Bayh is well respocted on the right and left. He brings executive experience to the White House. Most importantly, he puts Indiana in the Obama column, and that’s absolutely critical for Obama to win.
All that said, he’s probably picked someone other than these three. VP nominations tend to be a bit of a surprise.
Make Nunn Secretary of Defense (with the iron-clad stipulation that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is D.E.A.D. dead as of early March 2009), I have no problems with that. I really don’t want him as VP, though. Likewise, Biden or Bayh. I don’t want to lose another Democratic senator to the White House, period. We can’t afford to narrow whatever larger margin we get with this election. Especially if we kick LIE-berman to the curb.
You know what would be ironic (in a way people wouldn’t enjoy)? If the Dems get to 58 seats - or 60 if you count Lieberman and Sanders. If they have anywhere from 51 to 59 seats or 61+ seats, they have to be nice to him. But if he gets them to 60 exactly, they probably can’t punish him even if they want to.
I have a prediction that, whoever Obama chooses, we will quickly begin to see stories and rankings which tell us that, lo and behold, Vice Presidential candidate ___________ is either the “2nd most liberal person in the Senate,” or the “most liberal Governor in the US.”
I predict McCain will pick Lieberman and will therefore be discussed endlessly on the MSM for being so daring, or such a change candidate, or how he’s going against the establishment, or is still a maverick, or whatever the hell else.
Signal after signal says Obama is not going to surprise anybody with this pick and is going strictly off his list. It could all be an elaborate fakeout, of course, but to me, this seems like the wrong time to play it safe - especially when McCain is considered more likely to make an unusual pick, and may announce it the day after the Democratic convention ends.
I’m changing my definitive prediction to Joe Biden. He’s the only one on Obama’s short list who wasn’t tearing up the talk-show circuit this week and/or isn’t going to have his state visited by Obama this week.
Why? Biden’s not making the talk-show rounds (despite taking an important visit to Georgia recently) because he’s too busy getting his vice-presidential-nominee shit together for next week’s convention; Biden is laying WAY too low right now for nothing to be brewing. AND Obama’s making a visit to New Mexico and Virginia as a consolation prize to those states’ residents on the week he picks another state’s son as his ticket mate-- sort of “I like [Richardson/Kaine], but I just don’t think he’s what I need; I hope all you great swing-state voters will understand.”
I’d also like to predict that tomorrow at 10am EDT will be when the text messages go out, and the Cubs will take the World Series over Boston in 6.
[Off topic]In the **Oy!**niverse, the Red Sox are the only America League team allowed to win ever, so it’s a toss-up as to whether or not the Cubs will win. Clearly the Mets should win, as they should have every year since the miracle in 1969. [/Off topic]