Friday, August 22, 2008

Biden for VP: Mixed feelings

I am pissed that I didn't get a text message or an e-mail, but instead the news finally leaked out (presumably, after Obama and his capos went to bed). On frickin' CNN - Larry King - and the AP.
Also, Biden is Mr DC - a US Senator since he was 29, and now he's 65. Longer than McCain has been a Senator. More Dick Cheney (WY/DE's 3 EVs) than LBJ (winning TX). Proposed partitioning of Iraq as per ethnic affiliation - India/Pakistan are still suffering the effects of 1947 (as commenter Marshall pointed out on dailykos).
On the other hand - "a noun, and a verb and 9/11." Can be pithy (via Buzzflash) and feisty as needed (when he's not verbose). Georgia (Europe) invited him after the Russian invasion (as opposed to McCain sending Graham/Lieberman unasked).

Still, I hope this is more "Dewey beats Truman", part deux.

UPDATE (8/23, 0811): That was real. Confirmed by the text message I received at 0135 MT. Awoke me, but that's OK - the Obama campaign saved itself by sending out the text at the risk of waking people up, showing they didn't want CNN or other traditional media to break the news. But once it was out, they got on the ball ASAP. Good - I am mollified.

UPDATE 2 (8/25): So some people (PUMAs? Republicans for obvious reasons?) say the text message, sent out close to 3 AM ET Saturday, was a slap in Senator Clinton's face, in response to her "3 AM" ad in the primaries. See my take above (8/23 0811 UPDATE), which is also confirmed by Robert Gibbs, senior Obama campaign adviser.
PUMA counter: Of course Gibbs would say that, seeing the reaction from us!
Ho-hum.

2 comments:

Alkibiades said...

I look forward to your analysis and was wondering what you would make of the Biden pick. I was pretty skeptical, but am impressed, so far, with what I have been learning about him. I had only heard the negative things and not his powerful life story, nor his hilarious noun-verb-9/11 statement. (I saw that reworked as noun-verb-P.O.W. this morning by somebody.)

I am looking forward to Hillary Clinton's speech tonight. If she's half the politician I think she is, it should be an awesome, unifying moment. It should be clear by now that the PUMA's, etc. out there are not really Hillary fans, or they would have gotten behind Barack when she did.

As for the real Hillary supporters: just how stupid does McCain think we are? I am so insulted by his airing an ad saying that Clinton wasn't the VP pick because she attacked Obama, while at the same time airing an ad with Biden's attacks on Obama. Perhaps he forgot which ads he was running...

RS said...

Yes, I find his personal story very attractive as well. I wrote more on Biden here:
http://randomsubu.blogspot.com/2008/08/case-for-biden-over-clinton-as-vp.html

How dare you attack McCain's running two contradictory ads at the same time?! Don't you know he was a POW? ;-)