Taking a page from the John McCain playbook - and it is about time, Senator - Barack Obama has looked to the needs of someone other than himself - His tanking Campaign - over his own personal ambition and has chosen Senator Joe Biden as his running mate. I thought with all of the subterfuge and gadding about with the press these last few days, that Obama might select under-the-radar Sen. Jack Reed, but Obama head faked me - not too difficult. It has been All About Obama, but does not seem to be selling too hot these days. Obama needs an honest street brawler.
Senator Joe Biden is a great selection. Biden brings a wealth of seriousness to a Campaign identified by MTV-level thinking and life-style. Joe Biden knows how to bowl - out of the gutter. Well, sort of anyway.
My only beef with Biden stems from his willingness to carry the water of the National Organization of Women and the ACLU in their strident and un-American personal Borking ( a neologism coined in that time) of a Centrist legal scholar out of pure political necessity. Biden is still willing to play ball with the forces that fundamentally oppose all of his own strong virtues: Patriotism, Faith, Dignity, and Courage. The ACLU is group think. Joe Biden is better than that.
In The Bork Hearings, Joe Biden, who chaired Senate Judiciary hearings, came at Bork hard. It was an ugly chapter in American history.
Senator Ted Kennedy summarized the personal assault on Robert Bork:
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is -- and is often the only -- protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of American. No justice would be better than this injustice."
Doing the bidding of ACLU and the elites did Joe Biden no good. He himself was 'Borked' out contention for the Democratic Nomination. The Group think seemed to mistrust Biden's individualism.
Now, Joe Biden is needed to bring Catholics, blue-collar white voters and women back into belief that the forces of Group Think are not all that bad.
Unlike most Progressives, Joseph Biden is a street fighter, while they tend to be litigation terrorists and character assassins. Biden fights hard and comes at his opponent from the front. He does not give the enemy a head butt after a disarming smile. Say this for Biden - He told Robert Bork to expect an ass-chewing and the jurist was not ambushed:
LEAD: Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a Democratic Presidential contender, assured opponents of the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork today that he would lead the fight against his confirmation to the United States Supreme Court.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a Democratic Presidential contender, assured opponents of the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork today that he would lead the fight against his confirmation to the United States Supreme Court.
The remarks were made at a private meeting this morning called by Mr. Biden to convey his position to leaders of civil rights groups, who are marshaling for an all-out battle to defeat the nomination.
Pete Smith, a spokesman for the Judiciary Committee, confirmed that Senator Biden ''intends to oppose the nomination and to lead the effort against it in the Senate.'' But the spokesman said the Delaware Senator ''does not plan to formally announce his opposition until he has a chance to spell out his reasons in detail in a series of speeches, which he plans to begin next week.'' Hearings Set for Sept. 15
The Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over judicial nominations, and today Mr. Biden announced that hearings on the nomination would not begin until Sept. 15, almost assuring that the Court will have a vacancy when the next term begins on Oct. 5.
When told of the decision not to begin hearings until September, Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, said, ''We hope they will reconsider, because we would sure like to start the new term with a full Court.''
Mr. Biden's assurances that he will oppose the nomination represented an important shift by the powerful liberal Democrat that could add to pressures on uncommitted Senators, Presidential candidates and other prominent Democrats to take early positions on the Bork nomination. In the past, Mr. Biden has sought to avoid a politically and ideologically partisan approach to judicial nominations.
Some liberal and civil rights groups say that stopping Judge Bork's nomination will be their major priority of the Reagan era.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0DA1331F93AA35754C0A961948260
John McCain will have his hands full with Joe Biden, because unlike Senator Obama, Biden attacks from the front. The old fighter pilot's 'Neck on a Swivel' stance needs to be adjusted, because Joe Biden comes at you head-on.
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