Biden Mistake! Urged Kerry to be Hawkish on War/New Yorker, Zine.

[KoKo]

from: NEW YORKER MAGAZINE
THE UNBRANDING
by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
Can the Democrats make themselves look tough?

At sixty-two, Biden has a cheerful vanity and an exuberant restlessness that make him seem far younger. Since the election, he has become a leader of a modest-sized faction—“the national-security Democrats,” in the words of Richard Holbrooke, an ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton—that includes the most hawkish members in the Democratic Party. Among them are Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards, Senator Evan Bayh, of Indiana, and Governor Bill Richardson, of New Mexico, along with a number of Clinton Administration foreign-policy officials, now in exile at think tanks scattered about Washington.

Biden can be eloquent in defense of his party, and in his criticism of President Bush, but his friends worry that his verbal indiscipline will sabotage any chance he might have to win the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008. (Biden is an interested, but undeclared, candidate.) On the question of Kerry’s mettle in the last campaign, for instance, Biden told me a story that was both entertaining and illuminating but did not capture the matter with complete accuracy.

On October 29th, Biden said, he was campaigning for Kerry in Pennsylvania, the state in which he was born, when he heard, on the radio, that Osama bin Laden had issued a videotape in which he belittled Bush and promised to continue to “bleed” America. Biden nearly panicked when he heard about the tape, he said, because he worried that Kerry’s reaction might seem tepid or petty. His advice to Kerry throughout the campaign—which, he complained, went unheeded much of the time—was to harden his message, to focus, as Bush was doing, on terrorism alone: to sound, in short, more like the President and less like a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/index.ssf?050321fa_fact

[wtbymark]

1. I think its time for both Joes to go

[sportndandy]

2. long overdue

[merbex]

3. Oh yea

Get the hook

[Warpy]

4. Let's hope DFA is active in his district

and that they can find somebody decent to run against him.

Otherwise, the only way to do it will be to vote Green and get a pubbie.

[he lied us into war]

5. JEEEZOOO - What can you say

It might have been ok to focus on fighting terrorism and winnning the war in iraq, but you do that by pointing out that bush has failed at both tasks.

[w4rma]

6. I now trust Biden more than Lieberman, again. I'm convinced that Lieberman

will switch parties or, at least, campaign for the Republican (again?) if he's not shown the door in 2006. Lieberman's attacks on Democrats probably gave Bush the margin of votes he needed to get back into power, imho.

I don't trust Biden on economics, howerver. Pushing as hard as he did for that anti-bankruptcy bill and to even go as far as to help kill any amendments that would balance it is beyond the pale. Biden will *never* be president because of his trust issues.

[no name no slogan]

11. Biden's from Delaware-- he's the water boy for Big Corporations

Delaware has some of the most corporate-friendly laws on the books. That's why there's so many businesses that are incorporated there-- even if they're really based someplace else.

Joe Biden is just carrying the water for his big-money corporate backers.

[manly]

7. biden

biden says one thing, then does another. He sounds like he's going to fight, but when the vote comes he slides over to the other side.
I believe the man's a hypocrite. Well, that sounds silly, I suppose, calling a politician a hypocrite, since that's part of the job description.

[Protagoras]

8. JB is a classic snake-oil salesman.

He's got all the right words, and nothing that backs them up. I've never trusted him half as far as I could throw him. JL is a republican plain and simple. It's time for him to shove over and stop polluting our party count.

[demokatgurrl]

9. Wrong! I'm no fan of Biden

but I think, if anything, Kerry laid off too much. He should have slammed bush even MORE. After that appearance with biden, Kerry seemed to take the gloves off a bit. Unfortunately, the hardass persona didn't last.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

10. Kerry needed to spend those last 4 days hammering Bush on...

the terrorism issue. That is why Kerry lost. Kerry was seen as being weak on that one issue. Kerry needed to be a hawk during that time.

[DrGonzoLives]

12. While the Democrats

do need to articulate a national security plan better, Biden is an assclown. He's already campaigning to be on the ticket in 2008, which is why he's trying to distance himself from perceived "doves" like Kerry.

The Democrats can formulate a national security plan that is tough on terrorists without going into Bush with-us-or-against-us, invade whoever the fuck we want territory. They just need to actually sit down and work it out.

[cestpaspossible]

13. Jeffrey Goldberg is a hack

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02282003.html