The Biden attack/gaffe machine

Rich Lowry:

Joe Biden is performing a public service, God love him. Out on the stump, he renders the case for President Obama’s re-election in all its populist crudity. 

No dulcet tones. No faux sophistication. No charm. C’mon, man! There’s no time for that when Mitt Romney is descending on America promising to commit the most heinous acts in the history of vampire capitalism. 

The Obama re-election campaign must make Romney, a mild-mannered man with a sterling business record and a center-right record as Massachusetts governor, into a fiendish apparition too risky to entrust with the highest office in the land. That entails over-the-top attacks delivered with a cocksure shamelessness and little regard for nuance or truth. Vice President Biden reporting for duty, sir!

Speculation that Obama will throw Biden overboard and select Hillary Clinton as his running mate won’t die. It misses the point, though. Yes, Hillary is — to damn her with the faintest possible praise — a more serious figure than Biden. But since when is that the standard? Biden’s willingness to say anything makes him the ideal attack dog. If the Obama team didn’t have Joe Biden, it would have to invent someone as hyperbolic and overeager. 

The Cory Booker flap showed the danger of using a surrogate with standards. On “Meet the Press,” Booker called the attacks on Romney’s former private-equity firm, Bain Capital, “nauseating” and “crap.” He expressed understandable dismay about a president telescoping an election campaign down to a few distorted accounts of long-ago business deals. Immediately upbraided by his minders in Chicago, Booker recanted so fully that it’s a wonder that he didn’t offer to burn Bain to the ground in an oblation to the president. 

Biden may make many mistakes, but insufficient demagoguery will never be one of them....

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Biden is another Democrat with an overrated intellect.  He has been wrong on almost every issue his entire career, yet Democrats see him as a foreign policy genius.  Go figure.  But Biden has been so over the top he is coming across as unhinged from reality which makes for a difficult sale.  I suspect it is a sign of the panic within the Obama campaign.