White House kind of hints that Joe Biden is running for President.

Let us parse this.

“White House spokesman says Obama’s choice of Biden as VP indicates president’s view of Biden’s capability for presidency.” This, indeed, could be read as “The White House feels that Joe Biden would make a suitable President.” I will even concede that the White House probably would like people to read it as such. However, you could just as easily read it as “The White House admits that it picked Joe Biden for Veep as insurance against somebody shoving Barack Obama out into traffic.”

Seriously, you have to admit: it’s a valid parsing of the sentence. Albeit a highly obnoxious one.  Welcome to politics: here’s your accordion.

But does it mean that Joe Biden is running? …I really do think so, at this point. Hillary Clinton’s numbers are problematical for the Democrats and Bernie Sanders would end up being even worse. If you’re a Democrat with any affection for your party – and we should always remember that there are quite a few people who honestly do like the Democratic party, bizarre as that may sound – you can’t be enjoying the current situation.  Joe Biden would be at least different.

Now this is the point where we hear the You ignore Joe Biden at your peril, which is sensible enough advice in the abstract – but doesn’t really take into account Joe Biden’s actual electoral history. Barack Obama could have picked Bozo the Clo… OK, too easy to make a cheap shot. Barack Obama could have picked a ham sandw… right. Barack Obama could have picked anybody for his running mate in 2008 and 2012 and still won the elections, and by the same margins. On his own, Joe Biden is excellent at suborbital campaigns: which is to say, they go up. And then they come right back down again.

And as to whether Joe Biden’s going to run as Barack Obama’s third term… I don’t know: can we make sure that he’s going to do that? Is that something that we can lock in, ahead of time? – Because we here in the VRWC would make sure anyway that Joe Biden got saddled with Barack Obama.  Oh, yes, we’d look forward to that. Heck, that was going to be the plan with Hillary Clinton, and she was just Obama’s Secretary of State. A Vice President would be even better.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Notice how the White House declined to say “Joe Biden would make a good President?” Yeah. Apparently they’re not quite dead to shame yet, after all. Who would have thought i

16 thoughts on “White House kind of hints that Joe Biden is running for President.”

  1. Dead to shame, or holding that one for after the announcement?
    .
    I will quibble with one thing .. Biden has run several quite successful campaigns – he got himself elected reliably for decades, first locally then statewide. (1973-2009 .. heck of a run)
    .
    That he augured his presidential campaigns into the ground is perhaps something we can chalk up to lousy hiring decisions.
    .
    Mew

  4. I would argue that the fact that Obama ended up with Biden indicates that Barack Obama couldn’t have picked anybody for his running mate. More precisely, I think that Obama *tried* to pick somebody else for his running mate and had to fall back to Biden when it fell through.

    1. I believe the story was that Obama’s inner circle wanted Clinton, but Obama refused to accept her, and that Biden with Clinton at State was the compromise.
      .
      Mew

      1. I watched the press conference, Josh Earnest said something like “Picking Biden for Vice President was the smartest decision he ever made in politics”.

      2. I must’ve been keeping cynical company. At the time the conventional wisdom around here was that Hillary was so ambitious and amoral that she would kill anyone who made her their VP.
        .
        She is such a sorry sack nowadays that I wonder if I misread her. Maybe it is an act.
        .
        Biden is not that bad, for a Democrat.

    2. Bayh was on the shortlist. I’m assuming he said no. Otherwise Obama was really stupid for selecting a geriatric clown for his running mate. If Bayh were VP I’d actually be sweating ( what with Trump going on right now) the 2016 race. Granted Bayh would be toxic in Indiana due to being a part of the Obama administration if he were VP, but he’d at least be about 10 years younger then the average Dem candidate and lack O’Malley’s Baltimore problem.

  5. the White House also thinks Barack Obama has the capability for the presidency. their judgement is…suspect.

  6. Biden’s 88 presidential campaign cratered when he plagiarized Neil Konnock’s biography- not a speech but a bio.
    The commercials will write themselves

  7. My friends on the sinister side of the spectrum freely note that Joey choochoo is impeachment insurance.
    Because who would be so foolish as to hand that man actual power?
    .
    If he wins the primaries, I’m going to have SO much fun reminding them.

    1. I don’t buy that theory at all. Slow Joe as President? I don’t think he would’ve gotten a single thing accomplished–I don’t think he’s clever enough to have convinced so many other parts of the government to throw out all hint of impartiality in order to advance the socialist agenda (or, you know, less inflammatory words to that effect: it’s late and I’m too tired to rewrite that.)

Comments are closed.