Joe Biden: Change, Hope or Status Quo?

Posted by Fran Elliott

Many longtime Republicans want change – just like Democrats and Independents. The length and lack of progress in the war (actually wars), the worst real estate market in memory, and a unified sense that America has lost its way – have all converged to cause even the most loyal Republican stop and ask, “Can’t we do better than this?”

Then there is the nomination of John McCain. True, he’s a military hero of the first order, the likes of whom our nation owes a debt of gratitude, but his belief in military imposition of America’s will, his willingness to lead the charge of attacks against his own party and President – on all the wrong issues, and his volatile temperament, give the old Reagan coalition every reason it needs to seek out another candidate. Unfortunately, the other Republican contenders, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, were equally unsatisfying.

Along came Barack Obama – a breath of fresh air, a young energetic, articulate, multi-ethnic candidate with a true belief that taking a war inside of Iraq was a mistake, and had been a failure. Granted his voting record demonstrates his strongly, left-wing leanings, but many were willing to give him a chance because he brings a fresh perspective and sense of hopefulness, other liberal candidates lacked.

As the summer has worn on, Obama has been challenged by John McCain where he was given a pass in the primary season. Yet, though his lead has dwindled, Obama has withstood most of these attacks with his integrity and his message in tact.

All that came to an end today. Today, Barack Obama announced his choice of Joe Biden to be his running mate on the Democratic ticket. The prevailing thought, it seems, was to bring balance to his ticket. What kind of balance? On the issues? To gain a geographic advantage? To protect against runoff from the primary voters who had supported Hillary Clinton?

No, it was none of these. Instead, his choice for a running mate was designed to give him balance in the one area he clearly lacks – experience; specifically foreign policy experience. That’s right, in choosing Joe Biden for his running mate; Barack Obama essentially conceded that John McCain can run circles around him when it comes to issues of foreign policy.

So like George W Bush before him, Obama now has a running mate that adds credibility that America will be secure because the Vice President has a long history of foreign policy experience and the second in charge can be trusted to hold court with leaders from every corner of the globe. Now there’s change we can believe in!

Essentially, the candidate of change has decided that the strategy that got W – the man he criticizes so consistently – into the White House, is the strategy that will work for him and the strategy our country needs to continue to pursue. What further replications of Bush strategy can we look forward to once he gets elected?

To be fair, an Obama-Biden White House would surely stake out a different course in many ways. But with Joe Biden on the ticket, the course it will take now goes from hopeful to most assuredly, a worn out, destructive version of old style American liberalism that guaranties higher taxes, an even more bloated bureaucracy, and longer and louder cries about the enormous class of victims inhabiting America, and depending meal by meal on the White House for their very survival.

But it is not the abandonment of change, nor the nod to the extreme left that foreshadows doom for this ticket. It is Joe Biden. If you are going to vote this November, you need to get better acquainted with Joe, and you will. He is colorful, entertaining, and intelligent. He’s also pompous, irrational and one of the most narcissistic men ever to serve in what has become a sanctuary for narcissism in America – the US Senate.

Even the combination of his personal traits alone do not foretell the disaster awaits the Democratic ticket – it is his sheer unelectability. Why?

First, consider that Joe Biden is from Delaware where, every six years he piles up an electoral landslide against Republican opponents. Yet even as he does, he typically gets fewer votes than the majority of losers in Senatorial races elsewhere around the country. True, he can only get as many votes as there are in his own state, but it’s valuable to understand that this man has possessed power that far exceeds his electoral capacity over the past 36 years.

Proof? Twice now he has run for the Democratic nomination for President. And twice, he has been a disastrous failure. In the brief time he appeared on the scene in 2008, squaring off against his running mate, he was an utter also ran, coming in far, far behind Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. Remember John Edwards? Yes, that John Edwards, the one who would have wiped Joe Biden from the stage if Obama and Hillary hadn’t been there to do it.

The Democratic Party has soundly rejected Joe Biden from its ticket for 2008, yet its presumptive nominee picks him. There is a reason the voters said “No!” to Biden and Barack Obama should have listened.

Joe Biden is nothing if not a fraud. He was run off the stage in his first run for President in 1988 because of his gross plagiarism of the speech materials of Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader, and once that plagiarism surfaced, many others followed, going all the way back to works he took credit for while in law school.

Since then, Biden, like other senators, has reinvented himself. And he has done it primarily by aligning himself with the funding organs of the extreme left, notably with the feminist left which plays such a significant role in East Coast politics.

Since his days atop the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings over the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, Senator Biden has largely become the mouthpiece on Capitol Hill for groups like the National Organization for Women, leading the charge to ensure that while noble causes like preventing violence against women have federal legislation surrounding them, they come laden with enormous bureaucracies, regulations and misleading statistics that help ensure the perpetual funding of those who help keep him in power.

When the Violence Against Women Act was originally passed in the early 1990’s, one of its stated goals was to reduce domestic violence perpetrated against American women. Yet if the reports of domestic violence mandated under VAWA are to be trusted, assaults against women have not decreased at all – in fact, they have quadrupled since VAWA’s passage.

If the kind of change Sen. Biden has experience bringing to America is the kind of change Barack Obama champions, it is anything but change we can believe in. It is change we need to be done with. Joe Biden is not the kind of leader America wants – now or ever.

© Elusen Corporation 2008