Election 2008

Is Joe Biden helping or hurting? That's the question Chris Cillizza asks today in the Washington Post. It's hard to say, but as an unnamed Democrat points out, the Joe Biden gaffe market seems to be unusually healthy: "the fear is that he is exceeding the one small gaffe per week quota that the political market had built into his stock price. If he can't keep his foot out of his mouth, he will turn from a real asset to a liability."

Or maybe he knows it's the only way he can get attention. As Cillizza notes: "the only time Biden is able to break through the clutter at the national level is when he commits some sort of verbal gaffe."

To review the saga of the last week: first Biden gets out in front of his running-mate (the guy at the top of the ticket) and criticizes the AIG bailout before finding out what Obama thinks (he's in favor of it). So Obama has to slap him down.

Then, a few days later, Biden says an Obama ad about McCain not being able to use a computer was "terrible" and that "if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it."

The next day, the Good Joe Biden shows up and says that, "having now reviewed the ad," he realizes it was appropriate.

When the affable-yet-talkative Biden was picked, there were worries about Obama picking a gaffe-machine, but it was assumed he'd at least do well in the Biden vs. Palin match up. Lately, though, it's been more like Biden vs. Biden. Maybe the two need to sort it out in IM.

Posted by: Stephen Sherrill      I’m a fan of Stephen Sherrill