Biden His Time

So it's Biden after all, which, aside from his flacking for MBNA on the execrable bankruptcy bill, is more or less an acceptable choice. Even though Obama had a deeper bench to choose from than Straight Talk has, he is still obviously constrained by various in-house factionalizing, and realizes that he's not going to please everybody, but is at least smart enough not to piss off giant blocs of voters (as he would have with Bayh or even Clinton).

Some of the comments, as always, are priceless in their vitriolic lack of self-awareness, but the second of these two consecutive ones sum up the sentiments of most sensible people, I would hope:

No to Hillary means that I vote for mccain!

Posted by: joe | August 23, 2008 8:29 AM

If you consider yourself a Democrat and have rationalized voting for McCain because your candidate did not get picked, you do not deserve to be called a Democrat for you are actually an idiot. How one could rationalize voting for a man who has voted with George Bush 95% of the time is beyond my comprehension. The country's future is more important than your celebrity and/or feminist obsessions. I would have voted for Hillary but, she didn't win and that's it.

Posted by: Matt | August 23, 2008 8:32 AM

So now the prognosticators turn to Straight Talk's prospects, the announcement for which is scheduled for next Friday, McCain's own 72nd birthday. Heading into a holiday weekend. Should be good times.

Some of these clowns are "please, pretty please" type picks; can you imagine the fun in store if McCain were to make Giuliani his running mate? Christ, the comedic value of the rhetorical and visual contrasts would be worth its weight in gold, two angry one-note jackdaws warning the world off their damned lawns against two much more knowledgeable and polished speakers twice their size.

McCain's "safest" picks are the unknowns: Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Rob Portman. But they're only safe because they're unknown; Pawlenty is regarded as a drab but reliable pro-life tool from a potential swing state, Palin an entertaining and well-liked pro-life milf from one of the most corrupt, politically-inbred states in the country (which, to her credit, she has attempted to clean up where possible). Still, Alaska. Not bringing much to the electoral table there.

And either of those two will certainly be a shit-or-get-off-the-pot pick for people who are still(!) wondering about McCain's pro-life cred. Given all the other massively important problems facing this country, I don't have much sympathy for people (pro or con) who have chosen to make abortion their single issue, but I also don't see how he could be much clearer about where he stands on it and what he intends to do. So all these sixtyish dowagers I keep reading about who fought for Roe v. Wade back in the day and are now seriously considering McCain out of misplaced spite, good luck with that. Guess your struggle wasn't that important to you after all.

And Portman is a Bush hack, which gives the Obama team an opening to do what they should have been doing all summer -- hang the manifest idiocies of this administration around Straight Talk's neck. Jesus H. Christ, do these people need a diagram? One thing about Biden, like him or hate him -- he won't be shy about doing just that, and he won't be rope-a-doped by this tedious playing of the POW card at every opportunity. Biden can land a lot of body blows in this area that are simply off-limits to Obama and his perceived standing. But it's gotta be done; this dopey "John McCain means well, but he's wrong and he's mean to us" shit is not gonna fly.