I’ve been a fan of Joe Biden’s for years. I’ve always thought he would make a great President; he’s brilliant, he’s down to earth and quite frankly I think the man has a wicked sense of humor. Of course I think that Mr. Obama is the leader we need, but Mr. Biden rounds out the team of leadership perfectly!
Is there anyone in Washington who doesn’t like Joe Biden? I don’t think so. Although he is a 6 term Senator- he has never had that “inside the beltway” mentality to me. He says things that make the Washington elite faint and run for cover. Obama’s message is change. Obama wants to shake up Washington.
The McBush camp wants to paint Mr. Biden as the consummate insider and hardly a change agent and is antithetical to Obama’s signature message of change. But Biden- who commutes home to Wilmington DE rather than spending his evenings in the homes of the Georgetown elite- has really never been part of the DC establishment. He speaks his mind often -too often for his own good- but he is his own person and he is the perfect running mate for Senator Obama.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was asked by a reporter if he had a response to the best-selling “Obama Nation” by Jerome Corsi, which repeats discredited allegations about Obama and portrays him as a stealth radical with extensive Muslim ties’ McCain stepped toward the reporter, and the journalist repeated the question: “The Jerome Corsi book? That book, ‘Obama Nation,’ Jerome Corsi, that some people are asking . . .”
The senator replied, “Gotta keep your sense of humor,” and the media were escorted from the room as scheduled at the end of a breakfast meeting.
I guess Mr. McCain has a warped sense of humor. After all- he loves jokes about beating his wife and that make fun of Chelsea Clinton’s looks. Boy he’s a laugh riot! And then there is that hysterical little ditty- “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” or his knee slapper about cigarette imports into Iran.
Mr. Obama does get a lot of press because his campaign is historic. He is the first African American who has a serious chance to become President of the United States. But all that press is not positive and quite frankly if Mr. Obama blinks the wrong way it becomes the obsession of one or more news cycles.
On the other hand Mr. McCain gets away with gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. When the Obama campaign raises questions about why Mr. McCain makes so many mistakes, they scream – ageism. But if Mr. Obama says that he doesn’t look like other people on our currency- he is accused of “playing the race card.” The media focused so much time on that statement you would have thought Obama had accused McCain of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
This past week Senator John McCain took great umbrage with what he perceived as Senator Obama injecting race into the Presidential race. I beg to differ.
Let’s take a look at Senator Obama’s comment. “Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain had a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” he told a crowd in Springfield, Missouri. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. He doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.” My question is what is wrong with speaking the truth?
Okay, maybe it is a bad joke- “going through the change” and McCain’s age. I know- GROAN. But really it is amazing to me what John McCain is able to get away with as far as “shifting views” but if Barack Obama sneezes and turns his head a little to the right, he is accused of running to the center and “flip-flopping”.
But Mr. McCain- his “Straight Talk Express” has derailed so many times- it looks like the train scene in the beginning of the movie “The Fugitive”.
With all of the election fever and the pace of 24 hour news, we often lose the ability to sit back and reflect. Amidst all of the speculation of Hillary Clinton’s next move, who will be the Vice President and the punditry examining electoral maps for the general election and the negative prognostications coming from the parsing of polls done in the heat and passion of the Democratic primary and its immediate (24-48 hour) aftermath history was made. Not just political history but cultural history and world history. I was fortunate enough to be in Washington DC the evening of the Potomac primaries- a significant evening for Mr. Obama and I was in Washington DC again when Mr. Obama clinched the nomination of his party. The energy in the nation’s capitol was palpable.
Senator Obama becoming the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party is a moment worthy of reflection- it is indeed a profound moment.
I guess the months between now and November will be rich with fodder for the blogosphere- the first slavo of the general election campaign has been lobbed by of all people the lame duck president- George W. Bush. (I’m sure Senator McCain is thankful for the President’s support!)
I am a little late to the party writing about the President’s inappropriate remarks at the Knesset because in many ways the remarks speak for themselves- they are wildly inappropriate – like most of the actions of his administration. I won’t even dignify the President’s discussion of domestic politics at the podium of a foreign parliament or the evocation of Hitler to the Israeli Knesset. But Senator McCain has grabbed onto the word Appeasement- a word they have so blatantly misused and he is like a dog with a bone. So I guess this is with us for a while.
Back in January when I decided to endorse Barack Obama on this site and, more importantly, vote for him in the California primary- I was thrilled about Obama’s message but I also had some pride and some of my natural cynicism was lessened by the thought that this country had matured enough that it might have been able to bridge the racial divide and actually elect an African American for President. Beyond the policy issues and Obama’s positions with which I agree and the innate desire that Obama has to bring people together which I find compelling; there was the possibility that the United States had made great progress towards healing our great national birth defect- racism. Now I wonder if that is possible.
Between “Bitter-gate” and “Wright-gate”, Obama’s campaign is reeling. In my pieces: Pandering v. Nuance aka Clinton v. Obama and Obama Elitist? Not! McCain and Clinton are the essence of the Power Elite I have made it clear that my belief about the genesis of both of these campaign issues.
He also addresses with remarkable understanding how stigma often tied to homophobia is a factor that must be addressed in order to steam the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
There is little I can add to the reason why the LGBT community should support Senator Obama than to quote the eloquence of the Senator’s own words as written in his letter to the LGBT Community.
On January 20, 2009 at Noon Eastern Standard Time the 44th President of the United States will be sworn in. Is the nation hungering for more than just “easy change” but for transformation?
Senator Barack Obama got himself into a heap of problems with the Democratic Party machine when he talked about Ronald Reagan being one of the transformational presidents in our history.
His exact words were, “I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times…I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
