STOP the petty attacks on Democratic candidates.

[karynnj]

40. In Biden's case, I am reluctant to make that conclusion

I think the gaffes and misstatements that have been at issue are mostly similar to things he has always done. I suspect that they are a function of something often noted as a Biden asset - that he is very spontaneous. Part of that is his extrovert personality versus the more balanced personalities of people like Gore, Kerry and Hillary Clinton. (Only on a special politician only spectrum are they any where near introverts).

The extreme extrovert nature of his personality coupled with not having as much of a filter when running for President does lead to him both seeming more real and saying more things that he likely would not say if he mentally vetted every word out of his mouth. This has lead to more misstatements. repeating practiced answers (think Edwards) or mentally parsing every word (Kerry, Clinton, and Gore) does take away from spontaneity. Some, like misnaming world leaders - ie Thatcher for May (more than once) unfortunately are correlated to some people not having the instant recall that they had when younger. (Biden was a foreign policy person).

Another factor is that various Democratic opponents - or potential opponents - have fed the meme that he is gaffe prone. Then, in a Presidential race where - at its height - the politician is speaking as much as 16 hours a day - all recorded by someone, there will be plenty of statements that feed the meme, if it exists, that the politician is "gaffe prone". A related attack - is similar to an attack used on HRC is that he makes stuff up. I only recently saw the right building that re Senate trips to the Green zone in Iraq and his trip with Hagel and Kerry to AFghanistan. (With HRC it was the "under fire" stuff)

One problem wit Biden is that, per reports, the solution his team has is to limit his schedule. My concern here is that this shows little faith in the candidate and, if real, that this is getting out shows a team not 100% convinced in their candidate. It, oddly, gives credence to fears that he can not function well under the exhausting schedule of running for office.

I would be less concerned if Biden were to engage in far reaching interviews where he could demonstrate that he can easily explain complicated issues when asked. This would demonstrate that his mastery of issues, facts and potential solutions. If I saw things like that, I would not worry about any scramble to remember names. (Note that this is different than a prepared speech to counter issues not well handled extemporaneously in debates or in conversations.)

I remember why I did not want him in 2008, at a point where I wondered if Obama needed more experience and had rejected Edwards and Richardson and was very reluctant to back HRC. I looked seriously at both Biden and Dodd -- before going to Obama.

Starting in 2005, I obsessively watched the SFRC. When Lugar was chair, he ran a very civil hearing, often giving senators of both party more than their allotted time noting the questioning was productive and should continue. Biden cut everyone off as soon as their time expired and then took time to restate what he thought the conversion had been before calling the next Senator. Petty on my part ... perhaps, but it seemed to make the herings less productive than the ones Lugar or Kerry. Kerry went further than Lugar - even having some hearings that used a Ted Kennedy technique of letting the witnesses interact with each other and the Senators. In spite of his excellent debates then, this and his 26 minute monologue when he was at the Alito hearing and his strange statement that he would vote - just once - to filibuster Alito (making him useless if he was the 41st Senator) gave me cause to rule him out.

Now since then, Biden led various Obama efforts and to my knowledge managed them very well. That would be a better predictor of his ability to manage an administration.

I agree that there are many people who are very comfortable with him as a known quantity. However, I remember in 2005 how many pundits and people here argued that as HRC was a known figure, the Republican could not negatively define her based on lies -- as they to some degree did with the less well known Kerry. That likely was partly true even though Clinton had more baggage than Kerry did. A different response is that we simply need to work harder to define whomever our nominee is. This was done in 2008 with Obama.

At this point, the primaries will be what determines who the majority of the Democratic party trusts to be President -- with the first important piece being to win the general election.