Obama's VP: Joey Biden

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Below are a few Biden stories:

#1: In the dead of night, Obama announces VP choice

posted at 7:02 am on August 23, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

I’m not sure a political campaign could possibly screw up a running-mate announcement as badly as Team Obama. The e-mail message that the world awaited for days finally came — at 4:50 am ET.

As widely known late the evening before, Barack Obama picked Joe Biden to be his VP nominee, but apparently he didn’t want too many people to know it (below is the text Barack sent out):

Ed –

I have some important news that I want to make official.

I’ve chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.

Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois — the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago.

Let’s emphasize the timing of this announcement. Supposedly, Team Obama planned to release this when all the hip kids would have their cell phones at the ready and Blackberries in operation. At least, that was the excuse we heard when Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday slipped away and Obama hadn’t made his announcement.

So when did the Magic Text Message come? After last call in every time zone in the lower 48. The people in Hawaii were awake, though.

Sounds like Team Obama blew it. Big suprise? Nope.


#2: O'Biden! O'Biden! O'Biden! by Jonah Goldberg

I think it is an outright terrible decision on Obama's part to pick Biden. Yes, he helps balance Obama's inexperience on foreign policy, but he also reminds people of it. Yes, Biden could conceivably be effective as an attack dog.

But Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks. Obama doesn't need to increase his lip-flapping quotient. Biden is a gaffe machine and Obama is bad explaining faults, and his VP's faults will inevitably become Obama's in the Fall campaign.

Biden will be fantastic at convincing people already eager to vote for Obama to vote for Obama. His ability to convince the undecided is much, much weaker, in my opinion.

There's more than a small risk that Biden will reinforce the sense that this ticket is all about hearing itself talk. I wouldn't be surprised, two months from now, that we'll hear a lot of talk about how Obama's mistake in picking Biden can be explained by Obama's inherent weakness, and love, for talky-talk-talk.

This is going to be fun to watch. Can Biden really out-talk Obama?