Obama

I can’t tell you how much I hope Joe Biden’s (D-DE) remark about Barack Obama puts Biden's run for the presidency in the Not Gonna Happen column. When Biden said, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…I mean, that’s a storybook, man,” it showed he has the mind-set of a certain group of old guys. Biden at 65, is an old guy. These old white guys don’t even know how racist they are because it’s in their hardwiring. But that’s not why I hope Biden’s run for the presidency is doomed. I don’t like Joe Biden. He’s not only an old guy. He’s an old fool and an old pol. He’s been in the game too long. He’s traded too many horses. Every time he speaks, it’s a filibuster, he yammers. Also, he had brain surgery. In February 1988, Biden was hospitalized for two brain aneurysms. I don’t vote for people who have been prisoners of war and whose minds have been fucked with by professionals and I don’t vote for people who’ve had brain surgery. Oh, and Biden had hair transplants. I don’t vote for people who’ve done the hair-plug thing. You don’t think Biden did the hair plug thing? He did the hair plug thing. (Yuck! Gack! and Eeuww!) But back to Obama. Frank Rich interviewed Obama and he writes about the interview in his Sunday morning New York Times Op/Ed piece today, “Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience”. Rich said he can’t swear to Obama being clean because it was a telephone interview, but he said “Obama was definitely articulate…he doesn’t yet sound as completely scripted as his opponents.” Obama said with regard to the impact of the war in Iraq on the elections in 2008, “Ultimately what’s going to make the biggest difference is the American people, particularly in swing districts and in Republican districts, sending a message to their representatives: This is intolerable to us.” Obama has seen and understands that the elections coming up in 2008 for seats in the House and Senate will dictate what happens in Iraq and they also will dictate how the election for president turns out. Rich said, “In the Senate, even the rumor of a tough opponent is proving enough to make some incumbents flip overnight from rubber-stamp support of the White House’s war policy to criticism of the surge. Norm Coleman of Minnesota started running away from his own record the moment he saw the whites of Al Franken’s eyes. Another endangered Republican up for re-election in 2008, John Sununu of New Hampshire, literally sprinted away from the press, The Washington Post reported, rather than field questions about his vote on the nonbinding resolution last week.” Rich continued, “My own guess is that the Republican revolt will be hastened more by the harsh reality in Iraq than any pressure applied by Democratic maneuvers in Congress. Events are just moving too fast. While senators played their partisan games on Capitol Hill, they did so against the backdrop of chopper after chopper going down on the evening news. The juxtaposition made Washington’s aura of unreality look obscene. Senator Warner looked like such a fool voting against his own principles (“No matter how strongly I feel about my resolution,” he said, “I shall vote with my leader”) that by week’s end he abruptly released a letter asserting that he and six Republican colleagues did want a debate on an anti-surge resolution after all. (Of the seven signatories, five are up for re-election in 2008, Mr. Warner among them.)” A lot of voters, along with a lot of politicians, were fooled into believing the war in Iraq was the right course to take. And yet, those same voters who were pro-Iraq war are not going to be sanguine about their Senators and Representatives having voted in favor of the war. And no matter how they shake and dance, that Yea vote is a big strike against Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John McCain. Barack Obama told Frank Rich that at the time of the authorization for the war he was an Illinois state senator who didn’t have access to intelligence reports and therefore he recognized the hype about Saddam Hussein for what it was. Obama said in a speech in Chicago, “I don’t oppose all wars…what I am opposed to is a dumb war.” Barack Obama is lucky he hasn’t been in the inner circle in Washington. But he’s also smart and he sees the big picture. The big picture shows all the sycophants, toadies, ass-kissers and political hacks in Washington, DC doing whatever they have to do to get re-elected. The big picture shows the voters dictating the course in Iraq. The big picture shows Republican incumbents jumping ship and adopting whatever policies they have to adopt that will put them back in office. The big picture shows that any candidate for any office in 2008 that can demonstrate they’ve always been against the war in Iraq will be in the catbird seat come the elections in 2008. That is, if they can beat out Anna Nicole Smith who may be running for president posthumously by then.