Time to dump Biden on side of the road
Here is how to think about Joe Biden.
You know the guy who owns a Subaru with 310,000 miles on it? And he’s seriously considering spending $400 to see if he can keep it on the road for another 50,000.
And you’re like: “Dude, get a new car. You really got everything out of this one.”
Joe Biden is that Subaru. America had gotten a lot of use out of Joe Biden, and now it’s time to leave him by the side of the road, unscrew the plates and walk away.
I am 64 years old. When I was a freshman in college (in 1973!) Joe Biden was sworn in as a U.S. senator. He stayed there until 2009, when he became vice president.
His service as vice president was the equivalent of getting miles 250,000 to 310,000 out of Biden. It was an unexpected bonus and a job that really suited him. His reckless, impulse-driven style was a perfect counterweight to Barack Obama’s carefully measured coolness.
There is no reason in the world for him to be president. For one thing, he’s an idiot.
He bombed out of the 1988 presidential field because of an easy-to-spot act of plagiarism. He chaired the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and made a complete hash of the process, refusing to call as witnesses three women who would have shored up Anita Hill’s claims about Thomas.
Biden, like many other Democratic senators, voted to authorize President George W. Bush unilateral invasion of Iraq.
About Obama, in 2007, Biden said the following: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Idiot!
Like many idiots, Biden has a menu of things he can be smart about. He’s an experienced political infighter, and he knows his way around foreign policy.
But so what? We can get somebody better.
And now, Biden’s boorishness has washed up in Connecticut, where Amy Lappos, a former aide to Congressman Jim Himes, described a 2009 incident in which Biden, at a Greenwich fundraiser, forcibly pulled her head toward his stupid face in order to rub noses with her.
It’s hard to know whether he should have been reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Centers for Disease Control. Get out of here with your nose! You’re going to give somebody the flu.
Himes announced this week that, had he known of the incident at the time, he would have punched Biden in the face. Oh, I’m sorry. I think I had Himes momentarily mixed up with the character played by Hugh Grant in “Love Actually.” In reality, Himes has not expressed any outrage about how his aide was manhandled or nasally mashed.
Nor have any other leading Connecticut Democrats, none of whom ever stray far from the dog dish of the party establishment. Biden is a guy who has barnstormed for them in the past, and that it is all it takes to buy their loyalty and principles.
Thus, no member of Connecticut’s congressional delegation nor any high-ranking state official was able to say the following thing: “Biden crossed a line. He walked up to a woman he didn’t know, grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her face right up to his. That’s beyond disrespectful. It’s weird. Normal people do not do things like that. Shame on him.”
Instead we got a lot of hairsplitting about personal space and the difference between how something is intended and how it’s received. I don’t even get that. The intent was OK? His heart was in the right place?
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz came the closest to almost maybe sort of quasi-saying-something by applauding the courage of Lappos in coming forward. Bysiewicz: “I respect Joe Biden’s decades of dedicated service to our country. I also respect the right of Amy Lappos to tell her story.”
Wow. You sure you want to go way out on a limb there and say she has a right to tell her story? Hoo boy! The fat’s in the fire now!
I’ll say it: go home, Joe. You’ve had a great run, and I’m sure you can list many accomplishments. But you’re also kind of an idiot, and we’re really busy right now trying to get an idiot out of the White House. It doesn’t really make sense to put a different one in.
Rest up. Then get some help. This isn’t some endearing quirk of physicality. This is the kind of thing you get arrested for on the subway. Deal with it.