Joe Biden is a wonderful person, a good and faithful public servant. But he will never be president, and the very act of running for president in 2016 will damage America if he does it.
I'm no fan of Hillary, despite my being a fiscal conservative with a social conscience. During Bill's 1992 campaign, she was a cold, hostile fish of a woman here in Albuquerque. Probably just a bad day. I later saw her at the ABA convention in San Francisco, where she seemed to have a good grasp of the issues and policy. Her time in the State Department laid the foundation for many of Obama's foreign policy achievements. So while I may not like the woman personally, professionally she is the best candidate to hire for the position of president.
The main alternative today is Bernie Sanders. Let my prejudice show here clearly: Bernie Sanders is a national treasure. A public servant for over thirty years, he has always fought for us, not for someone else paying him to say something. He is as original and consistent as it gets (a trait not shared by Hillary). His policies would be good for America.
I'm a boomer, so I keep wanting to have it all, even though that isn't quite possible. Yet I see the smorgasbord of hatred and self loathing spread out by the Republican't party for Americans to consume, and I see their practice of the politics of personal destruction laying waste to all their hopes. Their candidates are salting the ground with racism and misogyny, making certain that the Republican't brand will become and remain a minority party for a generation. Which is sad really, because Republicans like Pete Domenici and John Kasich were instrumental in crafting the only balanced budgets of most people's lifetimes.
Which brings us back to Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States of America for two terms. A good and faithful public servant, like Bernie Sanders, for over three decades, but far less consistent. Joe will sell you down the river to make a deal in ways that Bernie never would, as his track record shows. Worse, since his positions can basically be xeroxed from Hillary campaign briefing books, there is only one ground on which he can run. As Bernie pulls Hillary to the left, Joe can try to flank her on the right, being more centrist, out triangulating the triangulator.
Unlike the Bernie and Hillary campaign, which has been about policy and what is good for Americans, the moment Joe steps into the ring, it all changes. Joe is warm, Hillary isn't. Joe has terrible trauma in his life, Hillary has terrible scandals (even if almost entirely manufactured). The cult of personality, so visible in the Trump campaign it basically defines malignant narcissism, becomes the Democratic issue. The policies are forgotten. #BlackLivesNoLongerMatter
Where there is no vision, the people perish. Whatever you may think of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, they are doing the right thing by talking to people about what government can do and should do. Trump says he needs to make America great again, AS IF it isn't great now. Part and parcel of destroying the legacy of the illegitimate black man (full disclosure: I was a neighborhood canvas captain in Obama's 2008 campaign, and in OFA in 2012 until I was removed for being a “firebagger”). Well I have a message for you.
Barrack Hussein Obama took a country thrown in the economic trash bin and got it off of life support. He took a country that spied without warrants, tortured and murdered without a trial... and continued to approve that (so the record isn't squeaky clean, OK?) But Donald isn't talking about prosecuting everybody who approved torture and restoring the rule of law. He doesn't care one bit about social justice, or the institutional racism of America. Neither do any of the Republican'ts he is running with, and the civil war in their party is going to be very exciting to watch. Repealing the Constitution isn't just a Republican't virtue, it is also the policy of the Democratic party. We just pretend that the power “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;” doesn't actually mean that, or that the laws passed to do that don't actually apply to those acting under color of law for America itself. We just pretend that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” really doesn't mean what it says, and that the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions don't really apply.
Vice President Joe Biden could have changed that. He could have been the moral authority to tell President Obama that Attorney General Eric Holder was wrong about approving warrantless wiretaps, torture, and murder without a trial. He did not.
Now his choice is to destroy the best hope women have ever had, just like the black man he stood beside, for the first of their kind to ever earn the office. He can cast doubt upon her. He can destroy her moral authority. He can damage the best opportunity for America to reject the Republican'ts depraved racist misanthropy and return to the law of order. He can deny a generation of Americans the hope of a better life, and he can have his name cursed for a generation as the man who took Hillary down.
Because make no mistake about it, Hillary is no more guilty in any of the currently manufactured “scandals” than she was in any of the previous ones. If you let someone tear her down, you are just as guilty as they are, in making up lies to discredit her. But if you step into that ring, Vice President Joe Biden, you will earn the hatred of women for all their lives.
Clinton/Sanders 2016!