Breaking Down The Biden Factor

I’m going to take a moment and pontificate about Barack Obama choosing Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate.

In any political race, there are those buzzwords that become meaningless because the reality is that there is always maneuvering and trying to stay a couple of steps ahead. Obama tapping Biden on the shoulder as his running mate is actually somewhat surprising to me, which may shock you. Three weeks ago, I hadn’t really thought Biden up on this.

But in some ways, it makes sense. Biden has experience, he’s bawdy in some ways, he’s good entertainment. I honestly thought Clinton might be on the ticket after she conceded earlier this summer. But her husband continued to be loud and annoying (I always dug Bill Clinton but he’s been one cranky old man this past year.)

Every state has different needs. Would Clinton or Bayr or Kaine or Richardson been as powerful as Biden overall?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I’ve really been thinking that with the Biden announcement at 3:00 a.m. was brilliant from a media perspective. Was there “change” involved with this? Yes. No other political announcement has been done this way. We had a media frenzy all week over who Obama would choose and then by sending the text out (although John King of CNN was pretty insistent last night with his reporting) at the same time that a Clinton ad made that time such an issue seems to me to be pretty much intended to make a point.

Sure, the Obama camp will deny that but what is done is done.

Biden only brings three electoral votes with him from Delaware. He’s Roman Catholic which is a huge swing vote in this country. It’s one not spoken about as much as votes on gender and race but it’s still important.

Biden brings 30+ years of experience to the ticket, something that Obama has been criticized for. He is a beltway player. His foreign relations efforts are well-documented.

He spouts off a lot and suffers huge foot-in-mouth disease, which is risky and the plagiarism issues of 1987 are still in some of our minds.

And, as I do sometimes try to let you know what I hear from the locals, he’s well liked by many of the people here in the rural area I live in.

Do I like Biden? Well, I’m not in love with him but I have seen him stand up on some issues I care about. He buried his first wife and a child when he was first elected to the Senate after a terrible car accident in Delaware. I have empathy for that.

So, let’s just throw it out there. Obama picked a guy who’s either liked or disliked equally. He’s added a bit of gray hair to the ticket and there is the issue of experience but not a ton of electoral votes.

It wasn’t what I expected but I have, as you can tell by the amount of Bigfoot posts I’ve had up recently, I haven’t exactly been pouring over the tubes trying to find a clue either.

But to say there wasn’t any “change” I think is buying into the buzzwords of the campaign, a word that got Obama the nation’s attention and also has created some nightmares for him as well. Well, there was some change to a degree.

This election cycle, due to a large part to the growing online community who educates themselves, is a change. For every blogger that passionately follows Washington, there are four or five people that watch ten minutes of news a day and could give two hoots about details.

So, I think Obama made a good choice in that regard. Biden is a brand. People know who Biden is.

And that’s for everyone out there who is watching NASCAR or The Food Network or any other niche station that aren’t news junkies, because you see, they know who Biden is.

It might help. It might hurt.

We will see.