Why Joe Biden is a GREAT choice!
From my good friend Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Professor of Political Science at Princeton University:
I called it! I called it! I have been saying that Biden is Barack’s best choice for months!
And why …
- Obama-Biden is one of the tallest presidential tickets in recent history. When you want to predict outcomes of Presidential elections few models are more powerful than “the tall guy wins.” Height is not an explanatory model (it doesn’t tell us why they win) but it has predicted every presidential outcome since FDR. These two will tower over McCain.
- Biden is loyal. He has been a personally ambitious politician, but he has also been a man of his party, willing to go to bat for other Democrats around the country.
- Biden has unparalleled foreign policy experience. He will be an intellectual asset to Barack.
- Biden has served with John McCain in the Senate for a very long time. He knows how his opponent thinks.
- Biden is funny, pithy, and substantive in debates. He is going to crush whomever McCain chooses as a running mate.
- Biden made that ridiculous “articulate” comment early in the campaign. Obama has now signaled that he is not an “angry black man” by embracing Biden despite this racially insensitive slip. Of course there was already plenty of evidence that Barack is not an angry black man, but US voters seem to need constant reassurance of this fact.
- Speaking of insensitive slips, Biden has a history of public gaffes. The Obama campaign needed someone who can say all the mean, but true, things about McCain that Barack can’t say himself. No one is better for this task than Biden.
- Biden is a fighter. Barack needs someone to get down in the muck with McCain, but leave Obama above the fray.
- Biden’s wife is a stylish, beautiful, smart blond woman. She and Michelle are going to be transcendently fabulous at the convention and on the campaign trail. The contrast with Cindy McCain could not be more stark.
- HRC keeps claiming that she has the main alternative group of Democratic voters, but Biden has a very powerful coalition of primary voters himself. Most never got a chance to cast a vote for Joe because he didn’t have the cash to keep running after Iowa, but Biden actually has a national constituency. Many of them are doing backflips right now!
- It is one of the best “sounding” choices of last name pairs. Say it with me Obama-Biden, Obama-Biden, Obama-Biden.
Yes we can!!!!!!
Melissa
