Comments on: Biden owes everything to Obama

By: neo

neo — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:04:39 +0000

Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are among the few people in the world less “likeable” than Hillary Clinton.

By: huxley

huxley — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 18:26:27 +0000

And she reminds me of my third grade teacher, whom I never cared for.

F: You had Mrs. Beck too?

I’ll go with you on Warren. I think the smoke-filled rooms are for Kamala Harris, but she doesn’t seem to have the Right Stuff.

By: F

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 18:13:30 +0000

Biden is a dead man walking. He might be the last person to know it, but the rest of the country is waking up to that reality.

Right now I think Warren has the inside track to the nomination, with Mayor Pete as her running mate. And she reminds me of my third grade teacher, whom I never cared for.

By: huxley

huxley — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 16:03:09 +0000

No wonder Biden’s defending Obama. Obama’s choice of him as VP is what gave Biden this shining moment. –neo

And, aside from occasional polite boilerplate, Obama is not defending Biden.

As the only moderate candidate with name recognition, Biden is positioned to take the nomination, but nothing else lines up. He is old, white, male, charisma-less and even at his prime, not very fast or smart.

I give Michelle Obama more of a chance, except I take her word that she really does not want to run.

It will be interesting when someone lands another solid blow and Biden breaks open like pinata and the other candidates scramble for his voters.

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 12:12:34 +0000

Hey, Cornhead, Biden is going to Iowa. If he turns up near you, you can ask him those questions — maybe.

I am sickened this morning reading headline after headline about Biden saying Trump is about “hate, hate, hate.” Look in the mirror, Joe.

By: Ed Bonderenka

Ed Bonderenka — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:33:18 +0000

Mike K. : I don’t think Harris survives Gabbard’s attack,

By: Chester Draws

Chester Draws — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 10:02:43 +0000

What does he bring?

Well, he’s not bat-shit crazy. So better than half the field.

By: OBloodyHell

OBloodyHell — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 09:11:04 +0000

What does he bring to the plate

Well, I’d say his love for America is touching…

By: huxley

huxley — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 04:14:27 +0000

Tanner continues in an impromptu passionate speech to his troops:
____________________________________________________

and one of the things I figured out very early on
is that the singer mattered as much as the song
that ideas were only as valuable as the people who got behind them

I mean people that wouldn’t settle
people unafraid of honest inquiry
people who didn’t mind asking the impertinent question

God…the impertinent question
where the hell would we be without it?
it’s the glory and the engine of all human experience

Copernicus asked it — shook the foundations of his world
Darwin asked it — he is repudiated to this day
Thomas Jefferson asked it — so invigorated by it he declared it to be an inalienable right

I’m not smart enough to know all the answers
but I do know
we’ve got to keep asking the questions

that’s what the American experiment is all about
it’s at the very core of our character as a people
we owe our vigor to its constant renewal

you know I don’t have much patience for these guys who go around
saying the pride is back in America
for some of us it never left

Vietnam may have covered some patriots in shame but not this one
we got in there for moral reasons and by God
we got out of there for moral reasons

where else on this earth
does such debate center on anything other than expediency
only in America

Watergate? — triumph of the system
how could anybody watch Barbara Jordan thunder away at those House hearings
and not feel a surge of pride in the miracle of this country?

and there are those people who will tell you that
our noisy dissent our raucous squabble
weakened us as a country caused us to lose our supremacy

don’t you believe it
we are the envy of this world
why?

because throughout our history
we have always maintained that we could do better
we’ve insisted that we could do better

we’ve always been willing to reinvent ourselves for the common good
and in our darkest hour leaders — real leaders — have always stepped forward
to hold the American people to the responsibility of citizenship

well it’s time for that kind of leadership now
and I’m not sure that it’s me
but I’d like the chance to find out
____________________________________________________

One can argue with portions of Tanner’s address, but he does represent a type of Democrat and Democratic spirit which went extinct with some recent asteroid strike. That’s the kind of Democrat I thought I was.

By: huxley

huxley — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 03:32:43 +0000

Back in 1988 Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) teamed up to do a mockumentary miniseries titled “Tanner ’88,” in which Michael Murphy played a presidential candidate, Jack Tanner, running in the Democratic primaries.

What’s apropos is that even back then — thirty years ago — Biden was something of a joke.

Here’s Tanner speaking to his discouraged team in the first episode. TJ is his campaign manager (played by the marvelous Pamela Reed) and Lexy is his daughter (Cynthia Nixon in maybe her debut):

You know, TJ, just before you called me last spring Lexy and I went down to the Democratic Leadership conference in South Carolina. The last night we were sitting around Kirk O’Donnell and Hart, Biden … a couple of the other candidates were shooting the breeze about how much the party had changed since the sixties. And suddenly out of the blue Lexy turned and asked Hart who his favorite Beatle was.

At first Hart just laughed and stumbled around, trying to remember a name. Then she repeated her question for Biden and Biden said, well, he’d never been a Beatles fan, he was into jazz. And Dukakis answered Paul, ’cause he liked his wife or something.

Now I don’t know if Lexy knows the names of all the Beatles herself, let alone the answer to her own question, but it suddenly dawned on me that I sure as hell did. And I knew for sure that anybody who didn’t, had absolutely no claim to generational leadership.

Now I must have ten years on Joe Biden but damn it, he wasn’t paying attention back then and I was.