It’s just so hard now. Yes, more politics again, I know. But is helping brands sell more toilet paper and getting a candidate elected really that different? Different tactics maybe, but the basic premise is tell me something good about this product so that I can buy it, right? Hopefully, the brand listens and does what you suggested they should.Not that I have all the answers either, but campaigns seem to come down to one or two key moments where someone does something you wouldn’t have suggested. Especially when a candidate in this day and age is one YouTube clip away from losing it all. The Dukakis Tank Incident™. “Read my lips!” This selection by Obama will turn into one of the moments that make or* break campaigns.
Somewhere Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter are both now popping champagne corks like the 1972 Dolphins watching a 15-0 team about to go 15-1 in the last game of the season.
I’m not saying that Joe Biden isn’t smart or that he doesn’t understand government. Clearly, you’ve done something right to become a U.S. Senator, and, he does sit on some important committees. Thing is, I’m voting for the presidential candidate—not their V.P. So when Clinton won and I got Tipper dancing all over stage like she just hit PowerBall, it was like, shut up and sit down, I didn’t vote for you.
Last thing I want to see is 1) A candidate with baggage, (if they have any), 2) A complete who? (Dan Quayle) or 3) Someone with so much Washington experience that it undermines the main candidate’s premise of not the same old politics.
Enter Biden. I feel like I’m watching the Yankees collapse against the Red Sox all over again. (Or, insert other major sports franchise collapse.) This election was the Democrats’ to win.
He may be savvy enough to negotiate the waters, but it’s not him that will turn out to be the problem—it’s the stuff the other side will find to use against him. They’ll find it too, they always do. Everything he ever said will appear nightly on Fox News. Which in turn affects the campaign at large.
I’m sure Obama’s camp vetted the hell out of him and did private polling to see what kind of fallout the choice would have. Bean counters did their thing and probably felt they could handle any negative opinion, why not go for it.
Problem is, the American public didn’t screen him.
Now all you’ll hear won’t be Obama’s message of Hope, but rather, Biden working the cable news circuit explaining something he said 16 years ago because Rush Limbaugh hammered him on it the day before.
As for the other guy, this takes pressure off McCain to pick a candidate. The focus will still be on Biden no matter who he picks. He could choose Lieberman, who’s still a possibility. Rice. Carrot Top. Won’t matter. If I was McCain, my next :30 spot would give the hyperbole a rest and just have a totally black background. Two words, knocked out in white:
“Thank you.”
*See how I hedged there with the ‘or’?
(Image via.) Tags: Joe Biden, Obama
9 comments:
Let me take a *big* risk here and debate a man bigger than me on politics :)
Actually, viewpoints aside, I was kinda thinking the opposite ... that Biden might help Obama. You are right in that Biden does diffuse Obama's change/hope message, but right or wrong I think Biden appeals to the vast majority of quasi-conservatives in the middle more than Obama does.
In other words, America is made up of a small portion of people who study politics and fall into two groups strongly in the left or right ... and a vast majority of mainstream apathetics who want to make a comfortable choice, who like politics like they like their oatmeal, predictable, slightly nourishing, and something really not worth thinking about. I really believe most Americans don't care a hoot for politics, whatever the media says, and they vote for someone who seems rather comforting.
So in simple terms, Biden looks like a handsomer version of McCain. A Washington insider. Some old guy with lots of DC experience. Hey, thinks Joe Sixpack. Obama isn't such a wild renegade after all. He picked a guy who knows where Iraq is. A guy who looks good in a suit. Maybe I'll vote for that.
All sizes of opinions welcome here. ;-p
It isn’t that he doesn’t bring with him the experience factor, he does. It’s just that Obama built a sizable following based on being a new voice, fresh start, etc., and here he goes and picks a Washington insider slash GOP whipping boy to boot.
I don’t mind that he did, I just wish, er, ‘hoped’ he would’ve been more honest about it from the beginning. Tell me “I don’t have the years or the experience that McCain has, so I’m gonna bring in someone who does.”
I can deal with that. Well, at least Obama just picked up Delaware.
Biden brings more than just experience. He brings a good record on women's rights, a good record on crime, and an attack dog philosophy that Obama needed in his campaign. He'll be that man in the campaign and that man in the White House.
Everyone knew Obama didn't have the experience that McCain has--not that that actually means anything considering that Nixon, Hoover and Buchanan all had decades upon decades of experience and typically populate the bottom 3 in historians' presidential rankings. Point being, Obama didn't have to bring it up, he just had to address it. And he did. With Biden.
This man is what Cheney was to Bush, what Johnson was to Kennedy. He brings strength where Obama was weak. It's exactly what a slew of Moderates who were uneasy about Barack's inexperience wanted him to do.
On top of all that, he wins puts white Catholics—classic swing vote—in the Obama column, and may sew up Pennsylvania (where Obama got trounced by HRC). Don't forget that it's the Philly media market that covers Biden locally.
You're not watching the Yankees collapse against Boston (and how dare you force me to relive that). You're watching the 1978 Yanks get their shit together.
get a life, this is the best thing that has happened to the campaign in awhile. They will make a great team.
Folks, we have one mission, and that is to get this guy elected. Get on board and get ti done. Let's not get caught up in petty bullshit.
BAG
@bruce - Already have one, thanks for asking. Look, I‘ve been as big an Obama supporter on this blog as anyone, let alone Faux News thorn in the side.
@JD-I’m with ya, but those are the things you want in your lead guy, no?
Just sayin gang, the shit the GOP will sling may be more trouble than it’s worth when it comes to Biden. (Much as I hate Billary, what about her 15-16 million followers too. Will Biden be able to win some of those over? ‘Hope’ so.)
Ann Coulter thinks about dead people when she's making love.
In all of American history, the choice of Vice President proved consequent in a Presidential election only once:
Lyndon Johnson in 1960.
If Obama wins Pennsylvania by a few votes, Biden can possibly claim some credit. As it appears he will spend most of the fall bopping around Scranton and Aliquippa and Blue Balls and Stroudsburg and Allentown and the coal mines and half-shift foundries trying to recapture his Neil Kinnock moment without Neil Kinnock's speech, itself one of the greatest speeches ever done, a music video in a way--so powerful was his Welsh eloquence that you respect Biden for having the critical acuity to swipe it.
I lost a $3,000 bet that Obama would pick Hillary Clinton on the theory that she was the only one who could help win the election for him.
Without her, he's lost. Altho given my win-loss record this year, I will probably have lots of people willing to take my money.
a brief psa: support the party you'd like to see win. criticize the party you'd like to see lose.
...at least until december.
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