Notes from Biden, including a little slip of the tongue
Sen. Joe Biden offered a good example today of the difficulty of a national presidential campaign. Candidates are rushed from site to site (Biden left Columbia for St. Louis), often hitting more than one state per day. And while mostly sticking to their stump speeches, they try to recognize local politicians and sprinkle their speeches with local references.
Biden slipped a bit during the introductions, through no fault of his own. In introducing local elected officials, from Ninth District Congressional candidate Judy Baker to former Gov. Roger Wilson, Biden tried to give a special recognition to Sen. Chuck Graham of Columbia.
“Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,” Biden says. He was a bit chagrined when he realized that Graham uses a wheelchair. He recovered quickly and told the crowd to “stand up for Chuck.” The crowd responded with a standing cheer for Graham.
Other notes from Biden’s speech in Columbia:
*The prayer before the festivities was offered by Pastor John Baker of First Baptist Church in Columbia, and it was full of political themes. Baker prayed for health care for all and a sustainable environment. The locals weren’t shocked at the political nature of the prayer. Baker is the husband of Judy Baker, the state rep who is running for Congress.
*Judy Baker served as the first speaker to warm up the crowd and get them “fired up” for Biden. (The “fired up” cheer sort of fizzled, as did “yes we can”. After the organized cheers died down, a solitary voice echoed the feeling of the crowd with three words: “We want Joe.”) Baker clearly got the “change” memo, using change in most sentences, sometimes more than once.
*Boone County in play? An Obama field representative urged the crowd to get their friends registered to vote. She said the county voted for George Bush in the last presidential election by a margin of 158 votes over John Kerry.
*Biden made sure to mention the 6th-ranked Missouri Tigers football team, though he also asked that nobody make fun of his school’s mascot, the Delaware Blue Hens. He also made sure to mention the Chrysler plant layoffs in Fenton and the Anheuser-Busch takeover by InBev. The last reference was one to “anxiety” in the American populous, wondering what might happen next.
*It wouldn’t be a political visit in Columbia without somebody asking about “peace.” A woman in the crowd asked Biden if he’d have the courage to talk seriously about creating a “department of peace.” Biden dodged by discussing his support for the Institute of Peace, a Congressional funded institute based in Hawaii. The question about peace was rooted in a fear about growing violence in America, as well as foreign policy. Biden responded that the way to reduce violence in America is to better educate our children. In one of his strongest moments, he walked among the crowd talking about how too many young children show up at school with a vocabulary deficit. He talked about his wife, a teacher. And he turned it into a finger-pointing argument to better fund early childhood education. It took him awhile to get to that, but he worked the crowd well and built up enthusiasm from a question that was a bit off-center.
Biden would have to have a frontal lobotomy to be more scary than Palin if either winds up in the Oval Office…let’s hope that if the phone rings at 3am and she answers, it’s someone asking “how ’bout them Blues?”. For that, her degree in SPORTS JOURNALISM would be appropriate, but not for much else.
Biden the Buffoon. He is very entertaining and is clearly losing some marbles. Hussein could have picked Hillary or Hillary should have been the nominee. Great nomination democrats!
Btw, USA is still the greatest country in the world even after 8 years of George Bush. Most Americans would rather live here than anywhere else. If you disagree, you are free to leave.
I was lucky enough to be present at this speech, and let me tell you, it was -amazing-
@Meg: Yes, the woman who asked about peace brought it up specifically in terms of increased violence in the country. And I wouldn’t call his answer to her question a dodge, really.
That is some sorry staff preparation on the ground, and someone should be sacked for not prepping Biden appropriately. In the world of political operatives, anyone who lets the candidate down in such an embarassing way as to make the right-wing blogs light up with chortling is subject to capital punishment (in this case, firing, or exile to get-out-the-vote in McDonald County.
But I admire Biden’s quick recovery.
Good for the Missourii woman!
There is a bill currently in Congress, calling to treat the epidemic of violence in our cities as a national priority. I would suggest reading it. Hopefully one day Senator Biden will actually read the bill that was personally given to him in South Florida last week. If he had he would have seen the top objective is to better fund early education and incorporate conflict-resolution, mediation etc within the classroom.
The bill number is HR-808. You can find out more about it at http://www.ThePeaceAlliance.org or read the bill at http://www.thomas.gov
Truly the best kept secret in America. It was first written in 1935 and niow in 2008 has the strongest, grassroots movement it has ever seen.
Biden is so embarrassing to Obama. Every day, he does or says something that’s just dumb. Is it too late for Obama to pick someone else for VP? Obama’s campaign can use a Palin like pick now.
The irony of this is that Sen Chuck Graham an embarrassment himself. Last fall he did his usual bar hopping and then drove home. Only this time he got so drunk he couldn’t talk and then proceeded to cause a three car accident by rear ending some people. He then refused to give a breath test and was ordered to submit to blood testing. He caused a commotion at the hospital over whether the police could collect evidence and he then intially failed to take responsibility for his actions in court before accepting his small fine. And now Biden singles him out for praise and unwittingly makes a gaffe himself…priceless.
I went to the Biden event at Mehlville High School in St. Louis today - I’ve been leaning towards McCain since he selected Palin as his running mate and hearing Biden and the negativity surrounding the people at the event just solidified my decision. A concern I have is the fact that Unions, espcially the UAW blindly vote for democrats no matter what. They had this woman from Potosi introduce the Senator. I’m amazed at the depths people will go to blame EVERY negative thing that has happened to them in their lives on President Bush…strange…..
Anyway, While I was standing in line there was an obnoxious man letting the world know who he knows while talking(SCREAMING INTO!!!)on his cell phone. Anyway, he was telling everyone that he got the event organizers to have this woman introduce Sen. Biden. Here is the funny thing! This event was so unorganized that the the security had no idea who she was and that she was going to introduce the Senator and were not going to let her in at first…the obnoxious man in the blue shirt kept calling someone who was organizing the event - he again made sure to reiterate to the world that it was he “Capt. Obnoxious” that got them to have the woman from Potosi to introduce the Senator….if this moron is so important what was he doing in the line with the “regular people” to begin with.
Funniest line of the event story - Just before the Senator came out the event organizers had members of the staff and students come into the gym. So the event is over and as everyone is leaving and a woman in front of me looks up to a young attractive teacher she knows standing in the upper deck of the gym, they exchange pleasentries and then the woman in front me says “I’m surprized to see YOU here?!” and the young woman replied “Oh…you know me…I love to witness a good train wreck” as loud AS she could!!!! The smirk on the young womans face was priceless….very humorous.
Palin and McCain are serial liars, how about reporting that?
Joe Biden is irrelevant. Obama should have picked Clinton. McCain would not have picked a womand and Palin would still be unknown. Obama and Hillary would have at least a 15 pt lead. No one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory quite like the democratic party.