Dullard with Sharp Elbows

I'll say this much for Joe Biden -- at least he didn't plagiarize this bit from Neil Kinnock:

"Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing," Biden said of the Republicans at a campaign stop in Danville, Va. "Romney wants to let the — he said in the first 100 days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules."

Then it happened. Biden began waving his right hand, palm up, and he adopted what he must have thought was the accent of a black minister.

"Unchain Wall Street," said Preacher Joe, reaching to the heavens, "They're going to put y'all back in chains."

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune asks a salient question:

Is that how people in Delaware talk? Or is it how white Democratic politicians speak when they're using dialect to talk down to black voters? What's next, Preacher Joe? Spirituals? Or are you going to carry around copies of "A Raisin in the Sun" and "To Kill a Mockingbird"?

It's a fair question. I don't know what Delawareans sound like. I'd be willing to wager they don't sound much like Amos and Andy under normal circumstances, but one never knows.

As I've written about the increasing string of nastiness that has emanated from Team Obama, I suspect that I've confused a few of my regular readers. At least one, Ace Commenter Rich, seems to think that I'm outraged by the behavior of Team Obama. He offered the following observation a while back:

You all seem upset that Obama forgot to act like Michael Dukakis or John Kerry. Or maybe it's that you guys are stuck with the horrible candidate from Massachusettes this time. Better get used to it. Obama, and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi all have some pretty sharp elbows. Thank God!

Actually, that's not it. I'm not upset; actually I'm amused by the way Team Obama is flailing around these days. I suppose Harry Reid deserves credit for at least knowing not to use bad dialect.

Biden understands that he needs to be an attack dog, but he's not very good at it. No reason to be outraged about it. The proper response is to laugh at people who are laughable. At this point Biden is pretty much a combination of Spiro Agnew and Pete Puma.

And the best part? Obama is stuck with him. Who would want to replace Biden on the ticket right now? Hillary Clinton? Not likely. Back to Kass:

Should Hillary Clinton come to Obama's rescue? Why should she? When she and Obama faced off for the 2008 presidential nomination, Clinton and her husband, the former president, had the race card played against them by Team Obama. Bill had dared to suggest that Obama's Democratic primary victory in South Carolina was similar to past victories there by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. For daring to state the obvious, the Clintons were savaged. Bill Clinton said it was Obama's campaign that injected the race issue.

"I think that they played the race card on me," a still furious Clinton said in a radio interview after the campaign was over. "And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along. I was stating a fact, and it's still a fact.

For all his vulgarity and faux-preacher dialect and smarmy pol tricks in Virginia, Biden showed the American people what they can expect from the Obama campaign in the months ahead. And he distilled the Obama re-election effort down to its basic elements:

Class war and race.

That's all they have. They certainly aren't going to run on their economic record. Maybe they can trot out the dog strapped to the car story again or something. As a certain radio guy in town likes to say, I always love that one. So here's my advice -- follow the wisdom of Elvis Costello. Don't be disgusted. Be amused.