glimpses of failed campaigns
There is a 1987 video of Joseph Biden that is interesting, watching his 1988 presidential campaign crash and burn. I do believe I saw it in 2008 at the time of Obama’s selection of him as vice presidential candidate, there posted in a favourable light in the “gotta love the man” with a focus on a different part of the segment, the part Biden was hoping would carry. So it is Biden gets asked what his college graduation rank, which seems to suggest this was a burbling issue, with someone in the crowd shouting where one would hope a candidate Biden would extrapolate for political purposes — “Who cares?”. You see the reporters turn about the crowd in gasped breaking of decorum and Biden move into response, a response that starts with an explanation on circumstances that would lead to finishing near the bottom of his class before pivoting to say falsely – – better to say lie — that after a break he finished strong and finished at such and such a spot. This footage would come to beplaced alongside footage of him repeating speech lines of a Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock in news reports on crisis decimating the Biden campaign. From there Biden moves on to the footage some Democratic Party supporter and blogger was using to sell Biden in 2008 — that sure, we’ll time to compare my seven point plan with Gephardt’s six point plan, but what Democrats seem to be lacking these days in our technocratic lovefest is soul and fire — a bit of an admission that in the Democratic primary debate there really isn’t much difference there.
The question of what, after all these years, you take out of it lands on an uncertainty. I am more interested in a dissection and explanation of what the younger Biden was thinking as he moved into “lie” territory — resume buffering from someone who thinks that the unflattering piece is there for the world to see but the hopes for rest is shrouded away and can be claimed, enough not lies in it that a look into it would see to it that. A burst of on the fly narration creation — something akin to the very progressive dad in the early 60s commenting about love when seeing two men holding hands in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Something else.