[Peace-discuss] Biden = business as usual...

[C. G. Estabrook]

[It was mentioned that tonight's AWARE meeting that the question of Supreme 
Court indicated a real difference between Obama and McCain.  Maybe not. Note 
Biden's behavior in regard to Bush's supremely business-friendly nominee... --CGE]

	"Change," "Hope" ... Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!
	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man 
so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our 
political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm 
senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.

The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks 
and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal 
sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any 
bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll 
likely detect Biden’s hand at work. The bankruptcy act of 2005 was just one 
sample. In concert with his fellow corporate serf, Senator Tom Carper, Biden 
blocked all efforts to hinder bankrupt corporations from fleeing from their real 
locations to the legal sanctuary of Delaware. Since Obama is himself a corporate 
serf and from day one in the US senate has been attentive to the same masters 
that employ Biden, the ticket is well balanced, the seesaw with Obama at one end 
and Biden at the other dead-level on the fulcrum of corporate capital.

Another shining moment in Biden’s progress in the current presidential  term was 
his conduct in the hearings on Judge Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court. 
 From the opening moments of the Judiciary Committee's sessions in January, 
2006,  it became clear that Alito faced no serious opposition. On that first 
ludicrous morning Senator Pat Leahy sank his head into his hands, shaking it  in 
unbelieving despair as Biden blathered out a self-serving and inane monologue 
lasting a full twenty minutes before he even asked Alito one question. In his 
allotted half hour Biden managed to pose only five questions, all of them 
ineptly phrased. He did pose two questions about Alito’s membership of a racist 
society at Princeton, but had already undercut them in his monologue by calling 
Alito "a man of integrity", not once but twice, and further trivialized the 
interrogation by reaching under the dais to pull out a Princeton cap and put it on.

In all, Biden rambled for 4,000 words, leaving Alito time only to put together 
less than 1,000. A Delaware newspaper made deadly fun of him for his awful 
performance, eliciting the revealing confession from Biden that "I made a 
mistake. I should have gone straight to my question. I was trying to put him at 
ease."

Biden  is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every 
word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. 
Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc , nourished 
by deferential  acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual  advances to 
staffers, interns and the like.  On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s 
editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, 
this staffer of another senator being accosted  by Biden in the well of the 
senate  in the week immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.

His “experience” in foreign affairs consists in absolute fidelity to the 
conventions of cold war liberalism, the efficient elder brother of raffish 
“neo-conservatism”. Here again the ticket is well balanced, since Senator Obama 
has, within a very brief time-frame,  exhibited great fidelity to the same creed.

Obama opposed the launching of the US attack on Iraq in 2003. He was not yet in 
the US Senate, but having arrived there in 2005 he has since voted 
unhesitatingly for all appropriations of the vast sums required for the war’s 
prosecution. Biden himself voted enthusiastically for the attack, declaring in 
the Senate debate in October, 2002, in a speech excavated and sent to us by Sam 
Husseini:

I do not believe this is a rush to war. I believe it is a march to peace and 
security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is 
likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur. ... [Saddam Hussein] 
possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons. ... 
For four years now, he has prevented United Nations inspectors from uncovering 
those weapons...

The terms of surrender dictated by the United Nations require him to declare and 
destroy his weapons of mass destruction programs. He has not done so. ...

Many predicted the administration would refuse to give the weapons inspectors 
one last chance to disarm. ...

Mr. President, President Bush did not lash out precipitously after 9/11. He did 
not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not dismiss a new inspection regime. He 
did not ignore the Congress. At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of 
moderation and deliberation. ...

For two decades, Saddam Hussein has relentlessly pursued weapons of mass 
destruction. There is a broad agreement that he retains chemical and biological 
weapons, the means to manufacture those weapons and modified Scud missiles, and 
that he is actively seeking a nuclear capability. ...

We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the 
long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.... [Biden confided to 
his colleagues that this would be a long fight, but was still for it.]I am 
absolutely confident the President will not take us to war alone. I am 
absolutely confident we will enhance his ability to get the world to be with us 
by us voting for this resolution.

In step with his futile bid for the Democratic nomination, Biden changed his 
mind on the war, and part of his mandate will be to shore up the credentials of 
the Democratic ticket as being composed of “responsible” helmsmen of Empire, 
stressing that any diminution of the US presence in Iraq will be  measured and 
thus extremely slow, balanced by all the usual imperial  ventures elsewhere 
around the globe.

Why did Obama chose Biden? One important constituency pressing for Biden was no 
doubt the Israel lobby inside the Democratic Party. Obama, no matter how fervent 
his proclamations of support for Israel, has always been viewed with some 
suspicion by the lobby. For half the lifespan of the state of Israel, Biden has 
proved himself its unswerving acolyte in the senate.

And Obama picked Biden for the same reason Michael Dukakis chose Senator Lloyd 
Bentsen in 1988: the marriage of youth and experience, so reassuring to 
uncertain voters but most of all to the elites, that nothing dangerous or 
unusual will discommode business as usual. Another parallel would be Kennedy’s 
pick of Lyndon Johnson in 1960, LBJ being  a political rival and a seasoned 
senator. Kennedy and Johnson didn’t like each other, and surely after Biden’s 
racist remarks about “clean” blacks, Obama cannot greatly care for Biden. It 
seems he would have preferred Chris Dodd but the latter was disqualified because 
of his VIP loans from Countrywide.

Obama’s Bad August

By last weekend the alarm bells started ringing in earnest at Obama’s hq. 
August was turning into a disaster for the Democratic nominee. At precisely the 
moment the candidate should have been heading confidently  towards his 
coronation in Denver , John McCain had seized the initiative. While the young 
senator from Illinois practiced surfing in Hawai’i the elderly McCain was busy 
in the rhetorical trenches, bellowing  “We are all Georgians” and staking out an 
order of battle for the Third World War.

Obama lost the battle of the headlines on Georgia and a week later he was in 
another no-win mess at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback evangelical church in 
Lake Forest, which is heartland Republican terrain in Orange County, south of 
Los Angeles. Obama and McCain each had their solo hour, answering Warren’s 
questions. McCain won big, with grave, clipped answers on the moral failure of 
his first marriage, his strategic differences with Ronald Reagan, his opposition 
to abortion.

What McCain did at Saddleback was bring the  important  Christian Evangelical 
vote back into his column. A week earlier a friend of mine from near 
Spartanburg, S.C. (“the buckle of the bible belt”) called me to say all the 
evangelicals he knew were going to sit this  one out because they didn’t trust 
McCain. After Saddleback he phoned back to say how impressed he’d been with 
McCain, predicting that the radio preacher James Dobson, leader of Focus on the 
Family, might finally endorse the Arizona senator.

Beset with gloomy quotes from leading Democrats about the need for their 
candidate to ratchet up his game and whack McCain, Obama’s camp tried to break 
the remorseless rhythm of bad headlines. They leaked the news that Obama would 
name his running mate as vice presidential candidate in the next two or three 
days, maybe even Monday afternoon.

The tactic worked. Inside dopester stories in the press duly followed on the 
possible picks. But on Wednesday the Reuters-Zogby poll reported that McCain had 
suddenly surged ahead, and was leading Obama nationally 46-41. Reuters-Zogby is 
well regarded, but this year has a somewhat spotty record. Two other big polls 
reporting Thursday had Obama leading McCain 45-42

Polls aside, it was obvious Obama has lost the initiative. Democrats were 
beginning to recall with a shiver John Kerry’s disastrous summer in 2004, when 
his candidacy began to sag in the face of ruthless battering.

It was not just a matter no-win situations like Saddleback or Obama’s refusal to 
call for Russia’s immediate nuclear annihilation. Polls showed Obama  lagging 
behind McCain as the man the public trusts on economic policy, a topic on which 
McCain  publicly confessed ignorance earlier this year.  Obama even managed to 
lose the initiative on off-shore oil drilling. In July McCain began  taking the 
oil industry line by saying that, in the interests of the always mythical “US 
Energy Independence”,  irksome environmental restrictions on off-shore drilling 
should be tossed aside. Since public cynicism about the oil companies has been 
increasing in direct proportion to the oil companies’ record profits this 
summer, it shouldn’t have been hard for Obama to paint McCain as a whore for Big 
Oil and a foe of marine life and usable beaches. The opportunity was enhanced by 
a 419,000 gallon  oil spill  into the Mississippi River the very week McCain was 
pushing off-shire drilling in Louisiana.  But Obama, almost always respectful 
towards large corporations, declined this golden opportunity and duly came out 
for off-shore drilling himself.

The problem seems to be that a man who’s come to think of himself as the conduit 
of Mankind’s purest hopes doesn’t want to scuff his shoes by kicking mud in 
McCain’s face. “McNasty”, as the Republican candidate was dubbed at Annapolis, 
has no problem doing that, even if his shoes come at $500 a pair.

All the same, Obama’s managers slowed McCain’s surge with the fake leak about a 
Monday release of the veep nominee’s identity. Then the same affluent wife who 
buys  McCain his $500 shoes bailed out Obama just when the adverse polls were 
making headlines. This time it was the houses, and McCain’s inability to 
remember how many he and Cindy own. That’s something Americans can grasp. A man 
who can’t remember how many houses he has, or runs out of fingers when trying to 
list them, is someone identifiably out of touch with the realities of everyday 
life. John Kerry had the same problem with all his and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s 
numerous mansions, back in 2004.

Then, as my coeditor Jeffrey points out, McCain lost the NASCAR vote by being 
unable to identify the make of the car he drives. “Check with my staff” he told 
reporters. Next,  McCain’s brother Joe shoved John’s head back under water yet 
again  by trying to explain the Republican nominee’s vagueness about domestic 
assets. It runs in the family, he said. “The person who took care of all the 
business was my mother. My father had no idea about the family business, what 
oil leases he owned in Oklahoma.”  Joe’s later attempts to portray the McCain 
family as scraping by, coupon-clipping for discounts at the grocery store, were 
unconvincing.

As for the overall state of the race, race remains the big factor. “I still 
suspect Obama has no chance,” a CounterPunch contributor remarked in an email 
last week. “Not enough people in enough crucial states will vote for a 
semi-black metro-sexual, especially when they get through calumniating him. 
I'd never vote for him myself, but he's probably preferable.   I figure he'd 
only be as bad as Bush.    McCain, I think, is unbalanced enough to start a 
nuclear war, and not stupid enough to be managed by others.”

Meanwhile, Ralph Nader seems to be dropping his bid to the level of knock-about. 
Following on his prediction that Obama would pick Hillary Clinton as his running 
mate Nader released a press release Friday arguing that his candidacy helps 
Obama. “Many Hillary supporters (half according to the most recent NBC/WSJ poll) 
do not want to vote for Obama. With Nader on the ballot, they have another 
choice to lodge their vote with other than McCain.”  Nader thinks HRC’s crowd 
will vote for him?

Face it, if you want to stay true to reason and  conscience, the man to vote for 
is  Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. Check out from Friday’s CounterPunch 
site his  stance on Georgia, an issue on which  I haven’t yet seen anything from 
Ralph . “Bad and over blown historical analogies won't help resolve the 
conflict,” Barr writes,  If this war was like Adolf Hitler's attack on Poland, 
as some have suggested, Georgia would be occupied, its government would be 
ousted, and its residents would be on their way to concentration camps. No one 
would be traveling to Tbilisi and we wouldn't be talking to Moscow… The most 
important American interest is defending America; and intervening on behalf of 
Georgia against Russia has nothing to do with defending America.”

	http://www.counterpunch.org/

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