Jill Biden to Teach at Northern Virginia Community College

From ABC7 News in DC:

Northern Virginia Community College has attracted what’s becoming an increasingly well-known face, Jill Biden, Ed.D., the wife of Vice President Joe Biden.

I’m glad to see Dr. Biden take up the opportunity to stay in academia, and I’m even happier to see that she has chosen a community college over some of the higher-profile institutions in the area such as Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, or even American.

With the economy in the tank, many people are finding themselves unemployed or unhappy with their current positions. One would hope that with this being the case, more Americans will take advantage of the vast network of community colleges across the country and get the skills they need to obtain a more desirable (and profitable) career.

Who knows, maybe Dr. Biden will have the power to convince her husband to push more agressivelly for student loan funding instead of sod for the National Mall and money for groups like ACORN.

In terms of a higher yielding long term investment, I think education will provide much better returns in both the short and long-run than any voter registration group.

There is No Fat Lady in Washington

I noticed one thing about the recent coverage on the new administration. Little to nothing has been said about the Vice-President beyond his daily gaffes. While one is constantly bombarded with biographies and odes to the POTUS, even the shoddiest clip montage of Biden is a rarity. The media decided that the simple man from Scranton is little better than a prop in their slick Ron Howard production; something to be used, filmed and then sold at some studio auction along with Doric columns from the Denver convention. Well, I say to hell with that! They won’t get away with their atrocities so easily. Props matter too dammit and it is high time that we all pay tribute to a man that has bucked the odds, suffered more than one political death and survived a blood soaked game that eats its young and forces it’s brightest into the loony bin.

Up until August Joe Biden was one of the big losers of the Democratic Party, not once, but twice. The man had lost two bids for the White House in only what could be deemed embarrassing failures. His 2008 campaign was something of a joke, doomed from the beginning and more of a fare-well tour than anything else. After all, five people voted for Joe Biden in the primaries, and two of those people were dead.

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The state of the McCain campaign and latest polls

For those who haven’t seen this yet, here is an email from John McCain’s Campaign Manager, Rick Davis, highlighting where they are, and how they see things:

To:Interested Parties
From:Rick Davis, Campaign Manager
Date: October 31, 2008
RE: The Final Push

The State of the Campaign

If your television is tuned to cable news as frequently as ours are here at campaign headquarters, you have seen the pundits say John McCain and his campaign are done. And, if you’ve followed this race since the beginning, this is clearly a song you’ve heard before. I wanted to take some time today to give you some insight on the state of the race as we see it.

An AP poll released this morning revealed a very telling fact: ONE out of every SEVEN voters is undecided. That means, if 130 million voters turn out on Tuesday, 18.5 million of them have yet to make up their mind. With that many votes on the table and the tremendous movement we’ve seen in this race, I believe we are in a very competitive campaign.

Here’s why:

All the major polls have shown a tightening in the race and a significant narrowing of the numbers. In John McCain’s typical pattern, he is closing strong and surprising the pundits. We believe this race is winnable, and if the trajectory continues, we will surpass the 270 Electoral votes needed on Election Night.

National Polls: Major polls last week showed John McCain trailing by double-digit margins – but by the middle of this week, we were within the margin of error on four national tracking surveys. In fact, the Gallup national tracking survey showed the race in a virtual tie 2 days this week.

State Polls:

Iowa – Our numbers in Iowa have seen a tremendous surge in the past 10 days. We took Obama’s lead from the double digits to a very close race. That is why you see Barack Obama visiting the state in the final days, trying to stem his losses. It is too little, too late. Like many other Midwestern states, Iowa is moving swiftly into McCain’s column.

The Southwest – It is no secret that Republican candidates in the Southwest have to focus on winning over enough Latino and Hispanic voters in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado to carry them to victory. John McCain has overcome challenges Republicans face, and has made up tremendous ground in these states with these voters. For these voters, the choice has become clear, and you have seen a big change in the numbers. John McCain is now winning enough voters to perform within the margin of error – putting these states within reach.

Colorado – Barack Obama tried to outspend our campaign in Colorado during the early weeks of October and finish off our candidate in Colorado. However, after our visit early this week, we saw a tremendous rebound in our poll position, and Colorado is back on the map.

Ohio and Pennsylvania – Everyone knows that vote rich Ohio and Pennsylvania will be key battlegrounds for this election. Between the two: 41 electoral votes and no candidate has gotten to the White House without Ohio. Senator McCain and Governor Palin have been campaigning non-stop in these key battleground states and tonight Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has pumped up our campaign at a rally in Columbus. Our position in these states is strong and undecided voters continue to have a very favorable impression of our candidate.
Obama campaign faces tremendous structural challenges in the final days of this campaign

Obama has a challenge hitting 50%: Barack Obama has not reached the 50% threshold in almost any the battleground state. He consistently is performing in the 45-48% range. When we look closely at the primary votes, we see a history of a candidate whose Election Day performance is often at or behind his final polling numbers. If this is true, our surge will leave Obama with even or under 50% of the vote on Election Day.

Early Vote: The Obama campaign has promised that their early vote and absentee efforts will change the composition of the electorate. They have sold the press on a story that first time voters will turn out in droves this election cycle. Again, the facts undermine their argument. In our analysis of early voting and absentee votes to date: The composition of the electorate has not changed significantly and most folks who have voted early are high propensity voters who would have voted regardless of the high interest in this campaign.

Expanding the Field: Obama is running out of states if you follow out a traditional model. Today, he expanded his buy into North Dakota, Georgia and Arizona in an attempt to widen the playing field and find his 270 Electoral Votes. This is a very tall order and trying to expand into new states in the final hours shows he doesn’t have the votes to win.
The Final Barnstorm

On Monday, we will have a 14 state rally with our candidates crisscrossing the country trying to turn out our voters and sway the final undecided voters. Governor Palin will hit Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and Alaska in the final day of campaigning, while Senator McCain will travel from Tampa, Florida, to Virginia, then Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada and finish the night in Prescott, Arizona. The enthusiasm and excitement we generate on Monday will be the electricity that powers our “Get Out the Vote” efforts on Tuesday.
On the Ground

Our field organization has tremendous energy and is out-performing the Bush campaign at the same time in 2004. This week our field organization crossed a huge threshold and began reaching more than one million voters per day, and by week’s end will have contacted more than 5 million voters. Our phone centers are full and our rate of voter contact is significantly out-pacing the Bush campaign in 2004. We have the resources to do the voter contact necessary to support the surge we are seeing in our polling with old fashioned grassroots outreach.

On the Airwaves.

In the final days of the campaign, our television presence will be bigger and broader than the Obama campaign’s presence. The full Republican effort – the RNC’s Independent Expenditure and the McCain campaign will out-buy Barack Obama and the Democrats by just about 10 million dollars.

In short: the McCain campaign is surging in the final 72 hours. Our grassroots campaign is vibrant and communicating to voters in a very powerful way. Our television presence is strong. And, we have a secret ingredient – A candidate who will never quit and who will never stop fighting for you and for your families.

In these final hours, Senator McCain and Governor Palin are counting on you – they are counting on you to knock on doors, to make turnout calls, to contact your friends and neighbors. Get our voters to the polls and help John McCain fight for your and for our country. This is our last mission on behalf of John McCain and I have no doubt I can count on your effort and energy to carry us across the line to victory.

It’s definitely a convincing email; however they are definitely up against the wall with so many people deciding to vote early as it appears that a large number of those votes will be cast for Obama.

The latest Real Clear Politics battleground polling averages (as of 10/31/2008):

Latest Real Clear Politics National Average (as of 10/31/2008):

5 reasons why some might believe the rumor that Joe Biden is stepping down

If you’re a news junkie like me, odds are you’ve seen a couple dozen stories discussing a rumor that Joe Biden is planning on stepping out of the race in a few days, citing “health reasons”.

The rumor as mentioned on AssociatedContent.com:

“On or about October 5, 2008, Joe Biden will announce his resignation from the race as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate. He will cite health reasons and quietly withdraw. Hillary Clinton is poised to take his place as the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Or so this latest rumor goes.”

Obviously this isn’t the first time that rumors have been started about candidates that have turned out to be nothing, and I guarantee that this won’t be the last.

However, it’s not hard for someone to make an argument that would make this rumor seem like it could be a possibility.

While I am not completely confident in the rumor, here are five things that could lead people to believe that Joe Biden will be leaving the race:

1. – Joe Biden hasn’t been a staunch supporter of the activities of the campaign his name on. Here is Joe Biden commenting on an anti-McCain commercial recently run by his campaign (not a 527): ”

Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the “CBS Evening News,” Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it. “I thought that was terrible, by the way,” Biden said.

2. – There is no doubt whatsoever that Joe Biden is a “family first” kind of guy. Even after his kids grew up, he still came back to Delaware every night to spend time with his  family and always did what he could to keep his family close. Now that he is running for Vice President, his family has been a prime target for the RNC, particularly his lobbyist son Hunter who according to the RNC:

was until recently a registered Washington lobbyist whose clients received earmarks from Obama, and Federico Pena, Obama’s campaign co-chairman who has close ties to big electricity.

Random commentary: Honestly, I’ve always thought that this was a pointless argument by the RNC, because I’m quite confident that I can connect Hunter Biden to some of the lobbyists working for McCain. This whole lobbyist argument is getting old anyway, so focus on the issues! 

3. – Even Joe Biden himself has said that he thinks Hillary Clinton might have been a better choice than him for the VP:

“Make no mistake about this,” said Biden. “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified as I am … She’s qualified to be president of the United States of America and easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America. And quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.”

While some might argue that this was just Joe Biden being humble, the tone of his voice really had me thinking that he believed what he was saying.

4. -  Joe Biden doesn’t agree with Barack Obama on a variety of core issues, and it’s starting to show:

Asked by NBC’s Meredith Vieira whether the Fed should bail out insurance giant AIG, the senator said no: “I don’t think they should be bailed out by the federal government.” Unfortunately, the remark had more in common with McCain’s initial position on the bailout (instinctive opposition) than Obama’s carefully cultivated claim that he would not “second-guess” the government. When the bailout went through, both Biden and McCain bowed to reality. But the shift left Obama in a tricky position–as Matt Lauer pointed out this morning on “Today.” Noting that Obama had been hitting McCain for flip-flopping on the AIG bailout, Lauer asked the Illinois senator how he could criticize his Republican rival when his own running mate had made the same mistake. His answer? “I think Joe should have waited, as well.” Awkward. 

Random commentary: Why does the media consider any deviation from talking-points as a gaffe? Is honesty or an individual point of view no longer allowed in the political arena? 

5. – One could argue that even the Obama campaign seems to be reluctant to put Biden’s name on key campaign materials:

In a controversial move sure to upset millions of people, Barack Obama’s campaign has decided to forgo the traditional time-wasting distribution of chum (yard signs, bumper stickers, etc.) to try and win the election.

Random commentary: As a former campaign staffer, I understand the argument for forgoing the campaign signs. They take up a lot of time, and if both sides are good at what they’re doing, those signs wont be in people’s yards anyway come election day  

In conclusion, yes, I can see how over the past few weeks some might see Joe Biden’s departure as an inevitable event. However, Barack Obama is still beating John McCain in many polls, and it appears that Obama still may be gaining some momentum. While I don’t think that Biden is essential for Obama’s victory, I don’t necessarily see him doing much damage to the campaign either.

While there are a variety of things that make this rumor seem more legitimate, at present I have a hard time believing it. But as this post reflects, I can’t rule anything out.

Blogs covering the “Biden Rumor:”

• Progressive Californian 
• The Right Perspective
• Exposing Liberal Lies
• Frankly, My Dear
• Flopping Aces
• Texas to Oregon
• Sherryness
• Stix Blog

Is your blog covering this story? If so, mention it in the comments and include a direct link to your post!

New Polls Show Biden is a Null Factor

Three new polls have come out with samples from AUG 23-25. This time frame allows for the selection of Biden to sink in with the public and the Biden Effect has been thus far:

Gallup: McCain 46% Obama 44%

Rasmussen: McCain 46% Obama 46%

CNN: McCain 47% Obama 47%

Based on the numbers it appears that Biden is a null factor. He neither helps, nor detracts from, Obama’s campaign. I would venture to say that Biden does not help Obama because he is best known amongst those who have a great deal of political knowledge. As such, his biggest impact is on those who most likely have made a decision who to vote for. Biden does not attract casual or ill-informed voters who, incidentally, will decide the election. Biden is a favorite amongst the pundits and for that reason perhaps he wasn’t such a good choice.

    Biden discusses demographics in Delaware

The Biden Effect makes it even more clear that John McCain, if he wants to create excitement and buzz amongst the masses, must choose a more unconventional running-mate that changes the perception of the ticket and brings more than just political credentials…