Two months to go, people! Joe Biden is picking up steam and just in the nick of time.
It seems like forever that Joe has been struggling to get equal time at debates and media coverage on the campaign trail. He’s been struggling to raise large amounts of money and has been struggling to gain traction in Iowa. He’s pretty much been struggling to get any attention at all. The debate last week in Pennsylvania may have changed all that.
Everybody knows that the big story from the debate was the attacks on Hillary and her ridiculous answer on the immigration driver’s license question leaving her vulnerable. That was the headline. Obviously. But there was also an interesteing sub-story that has developed and that is the war of words between Joe Biden and Rudy Giuliani. Biden only had something like 8 minutes to speak compared to Hillary’s 25ish minutes, and he had to make good use of it. The highlight of the debate for me was when he said of the repub frontrunner,
"Rudy Giuliani is the most unqualified person to run for president since George W. Bush...he only mentions three things in a sentence, a noun, a verb, and 9/11."
His answer on Kyl/Liberman was spot on as well.
"Look, we have a problem in the Senate – and I’m not just directing this at Hillary, there were 75 other people that voted with her – there are consequences for what we do. And it’s not even about going to war. Let’s take a look what happened from the moment that vote took place. Oil prices went up to $90 a barrel, who benefits from that? All this talk of war, all this talk of declaring people to be terrorists drove up the price of oil. Secondly, we have emboldened Bush at a minimum. His talk of World War three – totally irresponsible talk, we’ve emboldened him to move if he chooses to move...We just declared them terrorists, that gives him the color of right to move against them. Thirdly, this has incredible consequences for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nobody talks about this! The 75 of our colleagues don’t understand. We have now driven underground every moderate in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This literally, literally puts Karzai and Musharraf in jeopardy. The notion here is that it plays into this whole urban legend that American is on a crusade against Islam. This was bad – if nothing else happens – not another single thing, this was bad policy. The president had the ability to do everything that amendment called for without us talking to it, and all it has done is hurt us. Even if not another action is taken, actions have consequences, big nations can’t bluff."
Wowza.
Biden’s debate performance was well received by Kossaks as seen in the post debate poll. It’s just the way things are that most people who have made up their mind are going to say that their candidate won the debate. So first, lest go back to the October straw poll that took place before the debate:
32% Edwards
20% Dodd
16% Obama
10% Hillary
6% Kucinich
3% Richardson
2% Biden
It’s probably a good indictor of how well you REALLY did in the debate then, to compare your level of support in the straw poll with your level of support in the debate poll. Let’s take a look at Dodd and Biden for the sake of comparison.
Straw poll results:
20% Dodd
2% Biden
Who won the debate?
9% Dodd
8% Biden
So Joe turned some heads. At the last debate, the video of his entire debate performance attracted only 4,000 viewers on Youtube. The video of his entire debate performance this time has 13,000 views and his smackdown of Rudy has been seen 45,000 times. Biden’s feud with Rudy only makes him look good and shows that if he were nominated he would easily wipe the floor with Rudy "so clueless on foreign policy that he had to hire Norman Podhoretz as an advisor" Giuliani.
Then last night at a house party, Iowa State Sen. Quirmbach endorsed Joe Biden, saying that he is "our best hope to restore America’s credibility in the world." I’m pretty sure that the only 2 candidates who have been endorsed by more state legislators in Iowa are Hillary and Obama. They have also raised about 10 times more money than him and received a million times more media coverage, so not bad on Joe’s part.
So all of this is good for Biden. The thing that most interests me, however, is the history of the caucus in Iowa. It seems that Iowans don’t like to be told that the election is over. Hell, just look at what a fuss they put up to be able to vote first. Iowans have always had unbelievable influence on the primaries, and they don’t want to be told the election is over before they’ve even voted. Joe hasn’t been able to do huge events like Edwards, Hillary, and Obama have been doing. He’s been meeting in people’s living rooms, face to face, answering each person’s concerns directly. He’s been slowly inching up in the Iowa polls from barely above 1% to 5-6% most recently. With Richardson sinking and after a solid debate performance, look for him to continue his upward climb.
Iowa was a huge surprise in 2004, and it might be again in 2008. I definitely am not saying that Joe Biden is going to win the nomination. I’m saying that if you are John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama in Iowa, you better watch your back. This is right about the time things started to turn for John Kerry in the hawkeye state, and Joe Biden is on a roll.