The Veep Choice
Can Biden Win Over the West?
By Richard Martin, 8-25-08
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Most delegates I spoke with this afternoon, on their way into the Pepsi Center, seemed to back the selection of Sen. Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate. That’s no surprise: delegates tend to be bread-and-butter Democrats, and Biden, with his long Senate tenure, his reasoned voice on foreign policy and his inside-the-Beltway stature, is about as establishment Democrat as they come.
Biden didn’t hurt himself by making his first stop in Denver a downtown BBQ joint. But that doesn’t mean the Delaware senator is going to help Obama win the crucial Western swing states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.
For one thing, Biden has been a staunch supporter of organized labor, not necessarily a great thing in the mostly pro-business states of the West.
“Joe Biden is a great choice for American workers and labor,” said Anna Burger, chair of the labor coalition Change to Win.
In Colorado, where a right-to-work measure backed by the powerful Coors family will be on the November ballot, Biden’s labor advocacy will certainly be targeted by the McCain campaign.
Biden’s record on immigration, a hot-button issue in a region where federal authorities have staged a series of controversial workplace raids the last two years, is mixed at best by the standards of the anti-immigration lobby. He voted yes on bills to a) prohibit barring illegal aliens from participating in Social Security and b) providing a path to citizenship to guest workers in the country legally. According to U.S. Border Control, an anti-immigration lobbying group, Biden has an anti-illegal-immigration voting record of only 8%.
Finally, Biden may be out of step with the prevalent libertarian strain in Western politics, particularly on the drug war. According to Glenn Grenwald, writing in Salon, Biden “has long been the leading advocate of the harshest and most aggressive drug criminalization laws and general ‘anti-crime’ measures.”
In a city like Denver, which has passed a marijuana legalization referendum, that’s not such a good thing.
It remains to be seen how Biden, a thoughtful guy with a lamentable penchant for putting his foot in his mouth, will help the Obama campaign pursue the Western vote in “purple states” like Colorado. Judging from his record, though, it doesn’t look promising.
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Comments
Biden is a good man with many mistakes to his credit. That is to say he won't hurt Obama in the West. I don't believe any VP pick is significant on a regional basis outside of the region where that person hails. Obama put his foot in his mouth in SF and offended white people with his remark about clinging to religion and guns. Biden is there to repair the damage. Ultimately, it is, first and foremost, about Obama. If Biden highlights Obama's lack of experience and credentials, then he is a bad pick.
This is a perfect choice. Biden WILL step in it, fer shure.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why Doesn’t Plagiarism Matter?
By Jonathan Beecher Field
As David Horowitz would be quick to remind you, academics tend to skew to the left in their political outlook relative to the general population. I am no exception. Like so many of my colleagues, I have followed Barack Obama’s presidential campaign with interest and excitement. South Carolina had an early primary this year, and nearly all of the major candidates came to speak at Clemson University, where I teach. Obama spoke outdoors, on a chilly and gray afternoon, but the energy he shared with that crowd of teachers, staff, and students made the event the most compelling political spectacle I’ve witnessed personally. The sight of an integrated crowd cheering a black presidential candidate not far from a campus building named in honor of Benjamin Tillman, an ardent segregationist, made politics seem exciting again.
Remembering this sense of exhilaration I sensed in seeing a new field of political possibilities makes the sense of betrayal I feel today even more powerful. By choosing Joe Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama has insulted academics — students and teachers alike — a constituency that was significant in bringing him the nomination of his party. Especially in a year that has seen two prominent political careers hamstrung by sex scandals, and in an era where choosing vice presidential candidates seems to be foremost an exercise in avoiding skeletons in the closet, it’s surprising that Biden’s record of plagiarism did not disqualify him from Obama’s consideration.
Joe Biden, you will remember, ran for president in 1988. He delivered a speech that presented the thoughts of British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock is if they were his own, and was slow to explain or apologize for this transgression. The ensuing scrutiny of Biden’s record revealed that he had also plagiarized in law school, failing a course for doing so. Shortly after these revelations, he dropped out of the race.
The entire affair was a shabby and unfortunate business. Operatives from the competing Dukakis campaign secretly videotaped the offending speech, then leaked it to the press. When Dukakis found out, he fired his campaign manager, John Sasso, and replaced him with Susan Estrich, who turned out to be a much better legal scholar than campaign manager.
To a degree, appropriating Kinnock for a stump speech is an understandable offense. There is not the presumption of original and unique authorship in the words that come out of a politician’s mouth. Just ask Peggy Noonan. However, the phrasing of Biden’s speech, prefaced Kinnock’s sentiments with language that indicated that these were his thoughts. This incident suggests the same kind of troubling indifference to the truth that has been a hallmark of the current administration, but on its own, perhaps not worthy of ending a political career.
The incident in law school is more concerning, at least from the perspective of any educator. The kind of wholesale plagiarism Biden evidently committed, copying chunks of a law review article into a paper with his name on it, suggests an inclination toward the kind of malfeasance present in the Kinnock incident. In every class I teach, I spend time talking about citation, and why it is so important for scholarship. As part of this conversation, I emphasize that acknowledging sources is a condition of membership in the community of scholars: if scholars do not acknowledge sources, they do not belong in this community.
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There was a time in the West when horse thieves were honored with a celebratory necktie party. A person's intellectual creations should be as valuable as a horse. So, if a politician appropriates either your horse or your ideas without your permission or attribution, shouldn't we have a 21st century form of the Old West celebration?
"Songbird-McCain" or go to the web site:
VietnamveteransagainstJohnMcCain.com then the race will be over.
By the way, fellow Hanoi guests with McCain were Bud Day and Leo Thorsness, both Medal of Honor recipients. They tell vastly different stories about McCain and their time together as POW's. Both of these heroic gentleman support McCain.
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstJohnMcCain.com
Notice on the videos that all are conservative Republicans, not liberal
Democrats. Former Congressman Bob Dornan, R-CA is as right wing
as you can get.