He’s from… Delaware.
Danged. I was holding out for Chet Edwards. The absuridty of these proceedings was shown in the fact that as names shuffled around in this empty Zeitgist, some names being the “Flavor of the Moment” and then lapsing, before landing on Joseph Biden, the name “Chet Edwards” popped up not once, but twice. It might be interesting, but probably not terribly satisfying to diagram the manner names popped into being and hovered around and out, and back in — ala Chet Edwards. For McCain, the diagram strikes me as fairly simple — this great triangle with Mitt Romney at top and “Attractive Controversial Unnamed” categories below it (“Pro-Choice”, “Woman”), and then the governor of Alaska and Joseph Lieberman.
I suspect that the significance of Chet Edwards’s return onto this list was that Barack Obama really really really wanted to nominate Evan Bayh, but found the Facebook Opposition fist too much to overcome, and thought Chet Edwards would fool this Mighty Facebook Fist. There is just no other explanation.
Anyway, congratulations to everyone who signed up to be “the first to know”. Not only does Obama now know where he can spam you, but I knew who Obama’s pick was before you received the call — hearing the top and middle of the hour ABC News items on Rachel Maddow on KPOJ report that “Secret Service” has descended on Joseph Biden. Reporting the smoke, if not the fire. But Obama is a Movement, I hear, and a Movement requires Spam Lists.
So Biden’s presidential prospects are more alive than they have been since his failed run in 1988. History shows that there is a greater chance that vice presidents will not become president than become one, but history also shows that vice presidents have a better chance of becoming president than non-vice-presidents. So it is Joseph Biden. Barack Obama has picked the man who take over after his assassination. The “Martin Van Buren” principle is at work — the “Charismatic” president and the “Grounded, Unassuming” vice-president. Biden is Obama’s Van Buren. Or is Biden Obama’s Nixon?
Policy and record wise, Biden is problematic, as is everyone else. But no one really cares about policy in this game of theatrics that is electoral politics. So the question is: Does Biden’s reference to Obama as “clean” and his reference to Delaware as a “Slave State” (in wooing Southerners) signal to the voting block made up of a sort of dolty mildly racist American that it is okay to vote for Barack Obama? If that’s an absurd question, I ask if it’s any less valid than what FOXNEWSMSNBCCNN is bloviating at this moment.