Well, my greatest fears were not realized: Hillary Clinton was not named vice presidential nominee by Barack Obama.
Instead, he chose the 35-year senator, Joe Biden, the ultimate insider. Like his grandmother and his church, the “change” meme was just thrown under the bus!
Not only did he not choose Hillary (as well as her 18 million voters and proven ability to get all those white, middle class votes in the states that will decide the election), Obama didn’t even vet her. What kind of decision-making ability, or lack thereof, does that show? If he loses one-fifth of Hillary’s voters, which the polls indicate is possible, that’s almost 4 million votes. Did he think Joe Biden was going to shore up all those votes?
Plus, the choice of the 65-year old Delaware senator takes away the issue that sticks to McCain the most: his age!
Biden will, considering his predilection for serious, embarrassing gaffes, hurt the ticket. Don’t be surprised if the Obama campaign keeps him out of sight at the first sign of his serial “gaffe-itis”. Being gaffe-prone is less a quirky trait with Biden, than it is a measure of his lack of intellectual discipline.
Have you seen the liberal pundits, like Eleanor Clift and Jonathon Alter, on outlets like MSNBC? They don’t look or sound happy. You can see that they sense that it all may snowball down for their man.
The choice of Biden is uninspiring. Moreover, the simple ads that the McCain campaign rolled out quickly (showing Biden saying that he thinks Obama’s NOT ready for the presidency), are devastatingly effective.
Evan Bayh would have been a terrific choice. He and Obama “felt” good together; they are both energetic and good-looking. Bayh was a bridge to Clinton voters (he avidly backed her campaign). He was highly qualified in his accomplishments, executive experience, and foreign policy chops.
Plus, Bayh wasn’t much older than Obama. So, next to Obama, Bayh wasn’t too old (as Biden looks) and he wasn’t too young (as Tim Keane is). But Bayh isn’t a tough enough attack dog — and Obama was looking for a “fighter.” Mistake. Bayh would have been similar to Bill Clinton’s inspired choice of Al Gore in 1992. Two young, good-looking guys of different races. Doesn’t get more “post-racial” than that!
Obama and Biden just look weird together. Is it any wonder that the Obama campaign doesn’t have the two appearing together for the entire week? Mmm. I guess they know what an an uninspiring duo Obama and Biden are.
In the end, no one Obama chose could hide his huge weaknesses: next to no experience and an inability to articulate what “change” he wants to effect. In short, the “empty suit” charge against him is becoming more and more palatable. Biden’s experience only highlights Obama’s lack of it.
When the obituary of Obama’s campaign is written, we’ll probably be able to trace the beginning of the end to his speech in Berlin in front of 200,000 Germans. The McCain campaign’s “celebrity” ad against Obama exposed the vacuousness of Obama’s rhetoric.
Then came the Saddleback Church forum where voters witnessed a decisive leader in John McCain and a nuanced, indecisive, Barack Obama. The forum not only showed Republicans that they had a real candidate in McCain, but it showed Democrats how deficient their candidate was when juxtaposed with McCain. You could feel the air going out of the Obama campaign during and after the debate.
Furthermore, Saddleback allowed voters to see what the presidential debates are going to look like starting in late September: experienced and decisive vs. unprepared, inexperienced, and unaccomplished. Liberals started to see the writing on the wall and it didn’t look good.
It explains why a rash of post-Saddleback articles by liberal writers all offered somewhat hysterical advice to Obama as to what he had to do to win: “fight harder,” “choose Hillary,” etc. They knew their candidate was no match for John McCain.
Liberals are nervous and for good reason. With battleground state polls moving in McCain’s direction, they sense — but have not fully come to the realization yet — that this election may be a landslide for McCain.
After the rollercoaster ride that Obama’s soaring speeches took the electorate and pundits on for months — a rollercoaster that they chose not to get off of — a sizable defeat of Obama would be tough to take.
Can’t say Hillary didn’t warn them that Obama wasn’t, in fact, The One!!
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