Listen
It’s amazing how fast the political world can turn. Just days ago, all the focus was on Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan – what did he bring to the ticket, was he too risky of a pick, would Democrats be able to use their tried and true senior scare tactics effectively against him? Yet in just a matter of days the focus of the race has shifted completely. Well, maybe not completely.
It’s still on the number two spot. But not the Republican number two. No, the man dominating the headlines right now is the current Vice President, the bumbling Joe Biden. To say that he is an embarrassment to this administration is an understatement. And that’s no small feat, mind you. With the disastrous mistakes this president has made, the fact that anyone could embarrass him or make him look worse is a serious accomplishment. Yet that’s exactly what Biden has done.
Biden’s rhetorical belly-flop yesterday was a doozy. He first told a largely black audience in Danville, Va., that he hoped they could help Obama win North Carolina. He followed that up with the claim that Mitt Romney wanted to “unchain Wall Street.” He then switched to a comic down-home accent and bellowed, “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains!”
Willie Geist, a co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, was blunt: “If Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate, said that to an African-American audience, there would be calls this morning for him to get out of the race, for Mitt Romney to withdraw from the race. There’s a double standard.”
But there has been a double standard for Joe Biden for decades, and almost every reporter in Washington knows it. Last night, a frustrated Rudy Giuliani acknowledged it on CNBC. “I’ve never seen a vice president that has made as many mistakes, said as many stupid things,” he told Larry Kudlow. “I mean, there’s a real fear if, God forbid, he ever had to be entrusted with the presidency, whether he really has the mental capacity to handle it. I mean, this guy just isn’t bright. He’s never been bright. He isn’t bright. And people think, ‘Well, he just talks a little too much.’ Actually, he’s just not very smart.”
It’s kind of amazing to look back on the 2008 presidential campaign in light of the last four years. To think that there were actually Americans who opted to vote for Obama/Biden because they just didn’t think Sarah Palin was prepared to take over as president if the need arose is simply stunning when you recognize who that put a heartbeat away.
LIKE US ON FACEBOOK
Yet the truth is that Biden has always been this way – it didn’t change overnight. He was this bad in 2008 when Obama picked him. Yet because he is a liberal Democrat, he always avoided any tough media scrutiny of his buffoonery. While the mainstream media continued their pathetic, decades-long routine of labeling virtually every Republican of national prominence a dunce, Biden continued to get a pass. He was just “good old Joe.” But now, all of a sudden, it’s not okay? Biden must be stunned by all the negative attention he’s getting. Why the change?
I think the answer is pretty clear: the mainstream media is becoming panicked about Obama’s re-election hopes. Sure, they are going to continue to tell us how tight of a race it is. They will continue their work as the mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. But they know the truth – they know the real numbers. They know what they’re not reporting. And they are very concerned. Otherwise, there’s no way in the world they would be giving quarter to the calls to replace Biden on the ticket. That type of a long-shot act of desperation by a sitting president would convey a real message of weakness just 80 some days away from the election. But the media is growing restless because things aren’t breaking their way – Obama’s way. In their desperate eyes, that leaves no room for error on the part of Team Obama. And when Joe Biden is on the ticket, saying there’s no room for error is as close to a forfeit as you can get.
Will Joe go? Very, very doubtful. And the media knows that. The fact that they are willingly running with such suggestions reveals they are sending the president and his team a clear message: things are not good.
