Hillary Clinton vs. Joe Biden

The attributes that Sen. Biden brings to the table makes his nomination a clear choice when you weigh the nominees from an objective and pragmatic perspective. And the good news is, that's true in an objective comparison to any of the Republican candidates as well. That's why he would win the White House for the Democrats and make a great president for the entire country.

Hillary Clinton is the front runner. Her supporters point to that fact as the primary reason to support her. Take her husband out of the mix, and she wouldn't even bother to run, because there would be no chance. As much as I like Bill Clinton, and I like Hillary as well, Hillary's marriage to a popular former president is not reason enough to elect her president.

The discomfort level with Hillary Clinton runs high throughout the country. Yesterday I received an email with a Hillary joke from one of my more sunburn-necked friends. Coincidentally, a supervisor of mine told the same joke in the lunch room yesterday. Today I received another Hillary "joke" from one of those Independents who is considering voting Democrat unless Hillary gets the nomination. This is a very common dynamic.

Now, imagine if Hillary won the nomination and is out there campaigning her heart out. From the other side we have Rudy Giuliani, who will be the Republican nominee. Then war breaks out between Israel and Iran destabilizing the entire Middle East, not to mention the the potential catastrophic consequences to Iraq and our military. China decides to back oil-rich Iran. In your heart of hearts, who do you think the country will look to to steer us through such a dangerous set of events, a much mistrusted Hillary Clinton, America's first serious woman candidate for president (yes, our country is not that progressive yet), or the guy the country associates with getting us through 9/11, Rudy Giuliani? Think about it.

Now, if it was between Joe Biden and Rudy Giuliani, Biden is a man with far more experience than Rudy Guiliani at everything; a candidate who doesn't have the questionable moral baggage that Rudy carries; knows the ins and outs of Washington as well as anyone, (making Guiliani look like a little boy visiting Washington for the first time); and has the only practical plan for getting us out of Iraq, again I think the choice is clear. Personally, I'm confident Joe Biden would clean Giuliani's clock. We'd better start turning this ship around before it's too late. Biden can win this election if we can just get smart and get him the nomination. Hillary will not be the first one crossing the finish line in a general election.

Clean his clock? You could be right. I still think it is early.

And this is the mainstream media's fault. They want to ram the top-tier candidates down our throats.

Read.

We have to help the Senator get his message out there. Any time you can advocate his nomination, any money you can donate, a bumper sticker, whatever you can do.

$20 when I can! I really think Joe is the best candidate, and I don't know how to convince a lot of others that it's true!

Just be pragmatic about it. He's the most experienced and is the only candidate with a responsible plan for getting us out of Iraq. And he tells the truth. I don't have much money either, but I believe in this enough to where I sold my house and have donated the money to Biden's campaign. Just kidding. I'm like you, I usually send him $25 at a time, but when I do I present it as a challenge on his weblog and usually 2 or 3 other people will match me or better. My sister & her husband are donating $100 and he's a carpenter, she's not working.

keep right on doing what you can!!.I send what I can every month, I could always put it somewhere else, but as someone on here said not long ago, "I see it as an investment."

Any thing you can do, monetarily or otherwise, helps to move the piece forward. There are a lot of us in the same boat doing a little and hoping the accumulative effect will win the day. I like candidates that are pushed to the front of the line by the somewhat disenfranchised.

Biden is the right choice. We get anyone else, Republican or Democrat, we'll be getting something less. I would feel safer with Joe Biden as our president because he's smart in a pragmatic way. And I don't mean safe purely in the national security sense. I feel that he'll be able to get more done, and done right, on healthcare, immigration, education, the economy, and anything else that he's confronted with. He knows the ropes and knows how to work across Party lines when he has to. And he's not seen as being divisive either, something our country desperately needs right now.

in their campaigns? Remain hopeful and believe :hi:

If we want to win, Biden is the person to go to. If we're more interested in just supporting the one we dig the most, then we should start trying to find something good about Rudy Giulani because he'll be our president for at least 4 years.

You are ruthless - and I like that in a fellow Biden supporter!!

At this point in their campaigns. Heard the Gallup guy also say, this must be good news for Dodd and Biden.

I knew it was low, but wasn't sure how low. Yes, good news for Dodd and Biden.

and then proceeds to tear them down. Then the 2nd and 3rd tier candidates pull up from behind as the "fresh" alternatives. It has happened before and probably will happen again. I predicted this would happen, but didn't think it would start so soon.

Too much media so early leaves a candidate very vulnerable and every journalist and pundit will be looking for his/her Achilles heel. For those who may not have any major weakness, they still will become overexposed and their rhetoric will get tired and old long before the election.

Biden is the logical choice for many reasons. Two of the main reasons are: he is strong on defense and progessive on social issues. John Kennedy was just such a Democrat. But, Kennedy barely squeeked by. It was Kennedy's Catholic religion and his lack of experience that nearly cost him the election to Richard Nixon. On the other hand, Biden's record of achievement and experience in national and world affairs is unparalled.

And he is perfectly positioned to overtake his rivals.

His timing couldn't be better: just as the Dems and GOP are at loggerheads over whether to fund the Iraq war and whether timetables must be part of the bill--along comes Joe Biden with a solution. He just introduced an amendment that calls for the adoption of his long-tenured proposal to separate the warring factions into three semi-autonomous regions under a decentralized federal system. There is simply no other viable option on the table. As journalist Jeff Greenfield noted, Iraqis are already adopting this plan on a de facto basis.

The Biden amendment has won wide endorsement and you can expect the Senate sinking deeper in to this quagmire to grab this life preserver of an amendment.

FORMER SECRETARIES OF STATE IN SUPPORT OF THE BIDEN-GELB PLAN:
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Former Secretary of State James Baker
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

FOREIGN POLICY EXPERTS IN SUPPORT OF THE BIDEN-GELB PLAN:
Former Iraq Defense Minister Ali Allawi
Former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke
Ambassador Dennis Ross, Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Ambassador Richard Haass, President Council on Foreign Relations
Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Yahia Said, Director, Iraq Revenue Watch
Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith
Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, CATO Institute
Walter Russell Mead, Council on Foreign Relations
Anne Marie Slaughter, Dean of Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University
Eric Leaver, Institute for Policy Studies Research Fellow
Juan Cole, Middle East scholar and prominent blogger
David Phillips, Council on Foreign Relations, author of Losing Iraq

PUBLIC OFFICIALS IN SUPPORT OF THE BIDEN-GELB PLAN:
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico (D)
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Former Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN)
Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, National Security Advisor of Iraq
Congressman Chris Van Hollen
Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
Iowa House Assistant Majority Leader John Whitaker
Iowa State Rep. Doris Kelley
Rep. Lisa Heddens of Ames (assistant majority leader, Iowa house)
Rep. Mike Reasoner of Creston (assistant majority leader, Iowa house)
Rep. Dick Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Jack Carter, the son of former President Jimmy Carter, and Democratic candidate, Nevada
New Hampshire officials:
State Representative-Elect Jim Webber (D-Kensington)
Former State Representative Scott Green
Sanbornton Town Democratic Chair Andy Sanborn
State Rep. Bill Hatch (D-Gorham)
Rep. Stephen Shurtleff (D-Penacook)
Eileen Foley, who served for 16 years as Mayor of Portsmouth
Bob Preston of Hampton, a former Democratic Leader of the New Hampshire State Senate
Joseph Russell, former Secretary of the Stratham Democrats
Representative Michael Marsh (D-Greenland)
New Hampshire State Representative and Police Sergeant Mark Preston
Manchester Fire Commissioner and New Hampshire State Representative Robert Haley
Detective Steve Arnold, former President of the New Hampshire Police Association

Former Clinton White House Public Affairs Director Bob Weiner

EDITORIAL PAGES AND COLUMNISTS IN SUPPORT OF BIDEN-GELB:
Tony Blankley, Washington Times
Michael Hirsh,
Las Vegas Review-Journal, Editorial Board
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist
David Brooks, New York Times
Philadelphia Inquirer, Editorial Board
David Broder, Washington Post columnist
Jackson Diehl, Washington Post columnist
David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist
Bill O'Reilly, Fox News
George Packer, The New Yorker
Portland Press Herald (ME) editorial board
Delaware News Journal editorial board
The Barre Montpelier Times Argus (VT) editorial board
St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board
The Journal Standard (IL) editorial board
Marilou Johanek, Toledo Blade (OH) columnist

candidate? Fear of war and Fear of Terror are not tactics normally used here.

Believe it or not, we really are at war. Believe it or not, terrorists really do pose a threat to this country. And we'd better be prepared to see the Republicans remind us of it again and again and again and again. This should be a given. We have to be ready for them and we won't be if we're going with candidate lite.

you said "Hillary Clinton is the front runner. Her supporters point to that fact as the primary reason to support her..."

Who, exactly, are you claiming is saying that?
Do you have a list?

There are a zillion legitimate reasons not to like Hillary. Implying that Hillary has no qualifications tells me you haven't done your research.


I'm glad you like Biden. He's a great candidate. But you're in for flames for insulting people who have taken the time to do their homework and are supporting Hillary.

I believe she is qualified. My argument is that she is unelectable in a general election. Nor am I insulting her. I like Hillary Clinton, but the Democrats have to win this election. I'm presenting my reasons why I believe she can't. In order to understand this, you have to consider what will be used against her, as well as all the candidates. Please don't suggest that I don't have a right to make my case. That's what the Republicans do and why I'm so damn fired up about winning this election. There's too much at stake. Realistically speaking, nominating Hillary is a huge gamble I personally don't want to take. I'm not going around this blog arguing that people shouldn't make the case to support her, nor am I on here saying that people shouldn't make the case against the candidate I support. You're just upset because you support Hillary and my points are legitimate.

"...As much as I like Bill Clinton, and I like Hillary as well, Hillary's marriage to a popular former president is not reason enough to elect her president..."

Certainly implies to me that, in your view, she has no qualifications....

I was, and still am, a big admirer of Bill Clinton. I had the privilege of shaking his hand, Hillary's hand, and Al Gore's at a campaign rally they attended. I admire Hillary as well. I was very happy that she won her senatorial race in New York, and she's proven to be an effective senator. But I think it's fair to say that she wouldn't be running for president today if she hadn't been married to Bill. I mean, consider the odds.

As I have mentioned in other posts, I'm a realist, or better yet, as President Kennedy once said, I'm an idealist without illusions. I think the rap against Hillary is unfair, another creation of the unconscionable neocons. But it's there and it's become real in the minds of a very significant number of Americans. She is trying to change that perception and probably will succeed to some extent, but mostly with people who may have had a bad impression of her, but weren't really sure how they felt about her. However, there are a lot of Americans who are comfortable vilifying her and nothing will change their minds. Many are the people who supported Bush during the second election even though the evidence made clear that Bush was a poor and deceitful leader. On the whole, Americans aren't particularly savvy when it comes to politics, at least not anymore. If they were, there is no way Bush would have become president in the first place. We tend to be led by our emotions rather than our intellects. And don't think the US population has gotten wise in just a few short years. Hillary Clinton is just way too risky to have as the Democratic nominee in a general election we can't afford to lose.

Just as Bush had a golden opportunity to unite the world against terrorism and to gain new respect for America from the nations of the world, the Democrats have an opportunity to unite the country and demonstrate to enough forward thinking Independents and moderate Republicans that the Democratic Party is a place they can feel comfortable hanging their hats. We can't jeopardize that opportunity like Bush did his. Joe Biden is the candidate that is best suited for achieving that. I'm afraid it's an impossible goal for Sen. Clinton, even though her supporters will have a difficult time seeing that.

That about sums it up with me. There is too much at stake to put pragmatic considerations aside. I think it is vital that we not only win, but that we win with a landside victory. Otherwise we'll have another four or eight years of stalemates. We can't afford to gamble with the future.