Democracy for Vancouver

Yes, Joe Biden has the brain and mouth to take on whoever McCain picks as VP (and to slap down this year’s swift boaters), and no, VPs don’t make policy, but if anything could telegraph Obama’s essential centrism, Biden’s the guy.

Some of Joe’s greatest hits:

On his support for the Iraq War vote:

I will vote for this because we should be compelling Iraq to make good on its obligations to the United Nations. Because while Iraq’s illegal weapons of mass destruction program do not–do not–pose an imminent threat to our national security, in my view, they will, if left unfettered.
…
I also take confidence from how far this administration has come on Iraq over the past year. Many in this Chamber predicted, and many who oppose this resolution predicted, that the administration would use the terrible events of September 11 as an excuse to strike back at Iraq. This, despite any credible evidence that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks on America.
…
Thank God for Colin Powell. Thank God for Colin Powell because that was the other half being argued by the administration quietly, saying: Mr. President, do not listen to those voices who counsel “no inspectors and do not go back to the U.N.”

[T]he President said this week that the use of force in Iraq is neither “imminent nor inevitable,” and that makes sense because while the threat from Iraq is real and growing, its imminence and inevitability in terms of America’s security have been exaggerated.
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I believe it is unlikely Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction against us unless he is attacked. To do so would invite immediate annihilation, and I am skeptical that he would become a supplier to terrorist groups.

So you voted for the war resolution because Saddam, unfettered, was a threat to the U.S., but unlikely to use his weapons against the U.S.? And trusting our soldiers and the Iraqis to the tender mercies of Bush and Colin Powell? That’s some stellar foreign policy judgment right there.

Biden joined the Thomas Friedman caucus first in Fall 2005:

I think we have to stay for the next six months in order to see whether they make the compromises necessary.

But the difference between Jack Murtha and me, he thinks it’s the bottom of the ninth, and we’re at the bottom of our order and we’re losing. I think it’s the bottom of the eighth, we’ve still have a 50/50 chance if we make some serious changes.

And again in February 2006 (pdf):

The next six months will help to determine whether Iraq comes together or falls apart, and whether our mission is a success or a failure.

Regarding his support for the bankruptcy bill:

Consumer advocates say that Senator Biden was one of the first Democratic leaders to support the bankruptcy bill, and he voted for it four times — in 1998, 2000, 2001 and in March 2005, when its final version passed the Senate by a vote of 74 to 25.

Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer group that opposed the bill, said that Senator Biden had provided a “veneer of bipartisanship” that eventually helped the credit card companies win over other Democrats. “He provided cover to other Democrats to do what the credit industry was urging them to do,” Mr. Plunkett said.

On filibustering the Alito nomination:

No. I think that a filibuster is not likely to bear any fruit here. We already have four Democrats who’ve announced they’re going to vote for Judge Alito. That gets it down to a pretty slim majority.

I think we should make fulsome statements as to why — in my case, why I think Judge Alito should not go on the bench. He gives much too much power to the presidency, thinks the president can go to war without the consent of Congress, et cetera.

But a filibuster, I think, is not likely to occur. But who knows? One man can generate a filibuster.

But not you, right, Joe?

On Obama:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

I’m not sure we could have expected better now, but I had higher hopes than this in January.