Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen for his running mate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., a man who once proposed the bottom half of the Democratic presidential ticket would best be filled with an unusual selection: Republican John McCain.
In two separate television interviews in the spring of 2004, Biden suggested the best way to bring unity to a divided nation was for the then-Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, to select McCain as his running mate.
"I think John McCain would be a great candidate for vice president. I mean it. I know John doesn't like me saying it, but the truth of the matter is, it is," Biden told Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press."
Only a few months earlier, Chris Matthews of MSNBC TV's "Hardball" asked Biden if he thought McCain would consider joining Kerry on a "fusion ticket."
"I think that this is time for unity in this country, and maybe it is time to have a guy like John McCain a Republican on the ticket with a guy he does like. They do get along," answered Biden, "and they don't have fundamental disagreements on major policies."
Leading up to the interview with Matthews, McCain expressed on ABC's "Good Morning America" that he might show interest in joining a Democrat on the ticket.
"John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years," McCain told the ABC morning show. "Obviously I would entertain it."
By the time he faced Russert on "Meet the Press," however, McCain had reshaped his comments.
"I will always take anyone's phone calls," McCain told Russert. "But I will not, I categorically will not do it."
Biden expressed both skepticism that McCain would accept and support for him if he did.
"Do I think it's going to happen? No," Biden told Russert. "But I think it is a reflection of the desire of this country and the desire of people in both parties to want to see this God-awful, vicious rift that exists in the nation healed, and John and John could go a long way to heal that rift."
When Matthews asked Biden if he would support John McCain as VP candidate on a Kerry ticket, Biden said, "I would. Yeah, if John Kerry said that's who he wanted, and McCain I'd encourage McCain to say yes."
In the latter of the two interviews, Biden even praised McCain's readiness to serve as president. Tim Russert suggested Biden eliminate McCain from consideration and recommend another VP choice, but Biden refused, citing the importance of the vice president being qualified to fill the president's shoes, if necessary.
"I'm sticking with McCain," Biden said. "I think the single most important thing that John Kerry has to do is to say that makes sense, that guy could be president, or that woman could be president. I think that's the single most important thing for people, when he or she is announced, say that person could be president."
All the more reason to have reservations about the two choices we have, IMO. I would gather that McCain is no longer the Democrats and the MSM's favourite Republican!!!
It's funny that you should post this because I came across something earlier today that I thought was odd. I'll see if I can go find it again...
Quote:
Posted on Sat, Aug. 23, 2008
Obama names Sen. Joe Biden as his vice-presidential pick
Margaret Talev and David Lightman
CHICAGO Democrat Barack Obama has chosen as his running mate Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, a veteran lawmaker with foreign policy credentials who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency 20 years ago and again this year.
The pair is to make a joint appearance together later today in Springfield, Ill., days before Obama is to accept his party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention.
Word leaked out unofficially late Friday and was confirmed by the Obama campaign via a text mail message to supporters received about 2 a.m. CDT. The text message read: "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.BarackObama.com Spread the word!"
The decision to go with Biden, 65, a Washington insider, over a younger politician with a lesser known national profile, such as Obama's friend Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, reflects how tight the contest is between Obama and Republican John McCain.
Biden's selection appears to represent a strategy on the part of Obama's campaign to reassure white, working-class voters in swing states who continue to express concerns about the biracial, first-term Illinois senator's readiness to lead the country in wartime.
While Biden offers various pluses to the ticket, he also carries some negatives. These include his reputation for talking excessively; accusations of speech plagiarism back in 1987 that doomed that quest for the Democratic nomination; and Biden's critiques only months ago that Obama wasn't ready to be president.
"There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden," McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said in a press release issued before the running mate announcement became official.
Biden also drew accusations of racial insensitivity in 2007 when he praised Obama as the first mainstream black presidential candidate to be "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Biden and McCain, meanwhile, are longtime friends.
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is a past Judiciary chairman and a Roman Catholic with working-class roots who hails from Scranton, Pa., a crucial swing state all of which could help Obama where he has real or perceived weaknesses.
Obama told an audience at a town hall meeting in Raleigh, N.C., earlier this week, that his choice of running mate would be someone who is "independent" and not afraid to disagree with him but that he would not cede major decision-making to his vice president as President Bush has with Vice President Dick Cheney.
"I won't hand over my energy policy to my vice president," Obama said. "I won't have my vice president engineering my foreign policy for me."
Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 at age 29. Soon after, his first wife and a daughter were killed in a car accident. He also survived two brain aneurysms in 1988. Like Obama, he is a constitutional law expert. He also has proved himself to be an aggressive campaign debater.
He is married with three children and five grandchildren. Biden's son Beau, who is Delaware attorney general and a judge advocate general, is set to deploy to Iraq later this year. Son Hunter has worked as a Washington lobbyist. Obama often rails in his campaign speeches against the corrupting influence of lobbyists.
(Talev reported from Chicago. Lightman reported from Washington.)
Obviously, I was doing some googling in regard to the clean and articulate thread, but when I read that Biden and McCain were friends, longtime friends, I just thought that seemed so odd (and creepy?) that I left it all alone. And now people are saying that Joe Lieberman, who I like, by the way, is on McCain's short list for Vice-President and I think about how the Republican establishment ignores people like Ron Paul and George W. Bush, who so many on the left think is far right supports things like amnesty by another name and my mind begins to reel and all these supposedly clear cut lines between Democrat and Republican begin to blur. More and more I think I am going to have to vote for a so called third party candidate. My husband and I actually started doing some research on them last night. I hate to vote for someone who has no chance of winning but this two party system that shouldn't exist, but does, is becoming sickening.
Posted: Mon 25 Aug 2008 18:39 Post subject: Curiouser and Curiouser
Curiouser and curiouser! I hadn't thought about it this way at all...
Quote:
McCain, Not Obama, Picked VP Biden
Posted August 23, 2008 | 02:54 AM (EST)
Presumptive Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama did not choose Joe Biden as his VP mate. Republican rival John McCain did. McCain made the VP choice for Obama easy even before Obama became the likely Democratic presidential pick. In May, McCain hammered Obama as being inexperienced and naοve on foreign policy issues. The tone, the tempo, and emphasis of McCain's attack were set. In the next few weeks McCain repeated the points about Obama mantra-like. He was too untested on foreign policy issues, and too inexperienced, and green to fight the terrorism battle and to be hard nosed enough on national security. Obama took heed of McCain's attack points against him.
The polls back up McCain on the claim that he's far stronger on national security. A Pew Research Center poll in June found that nearly half of Americans still say that Obama is not tough enough on national security and McCain is. Though most voters still rank the economy as their number one worry, and that supposedly works to Obama's favor. Obama's number one worry, though, is still being outflanked by McCain on the issue of national security and foreign policy concerns.
Biden's long years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put him at the center of action and even decision making on key foreign policy matters. His centrist stance on the war, plus his age, he's 65, and elder statesman image made him the made-in-heaven choice to foil McCain's set foreign policy and national security greenhorn hit point against him.
.
Obama is hardly the first recent presidential candidate deemed a neophyte, if not hopelessly far behind on the learning curve, on foreign policy and national security issues. Bush W. carried the same political albatross. He did the smart political thing and picked the older, experienced two stints Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate. He was also a consummate party insider, who reassured party regulars that the White House would not stumble when hit with a foreign policy crisis. It did on Iraq, but at the time the perception was that it was the right move.
McCain's attacks weren't the only things Obama heeded in picking Joe. Obama took heed of history. President Bush in 2004 pounded Democratic rival John Kerry in 2004 as being soft of anti-terrorism and national security. Kerry didn't get it. He picked moderate Southern Democrat, John Edwards, as his running mate. It didn't do a thing to help Kerry burnish his credentials as a tough guy on Bush's signature issues. This time around they're not the compelling issues that scare and concern millions of voters as they did in 2004. But they're still issues that resonate with millions of voters, especially the much coveted, moderate to conservative independent voters.
Finally, Obama heeded the polls. Republicans and independents say that they want a VP who has strong national security and foreign policy credentials. Democrats say the same thing. In a July poll by the Clarus Research Group, a majority of Democrats rated foreign policy and national security just below the economy as key concerns, and that the Democratic VP should have strong credentials on both. There is more to it than that. Democrats also worried over voter perception that Obama is weak on foreign policy. This could handicap him as a one dimensional candidate, and that could spell big trouble for him at the polls.
A massive viral email stealth campaign has kicked into high gear on the internet targeting Obama on his national security toughness. It doesn't stop there. This slippery campaign also questions his patriotism. Before the West Virginia primary, a piqued Obama snapped at one reporter who questioned whether white voters in the state saw him as un-American that he was a practising Christian and that his grandfather was a World War II vet.
Biden is on the ticket soley to parry McCain's hit point that Obama is a greenhorn on foreign policy and national security. Time will tell whether Biden will be much good in doing that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back (Middle Passage Press, August 2008).
I don't want to be some Joe SausageHead dupe falling for the okeedoke! What kind of game are they running? This reminds me of a song. Disclaimer: LOTS of things remind me of a song!
Quote:
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future
I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance
Cuz I can lead a nation with a microphone
With a microphone
With a microphone
'
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More and more I think I am going to have to vote for a so called third party candidate. My husband and I actually started doing some research on them last night. 
I hate to vote for someone who has no chance of winning but this two party system that shouldn't exist, but does, is becoming sickening.
What kind of game are they running? 
