WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware is Barack Obama's pick as vice presidential running mate, The Associated Press has learned.
Biden, 65, is a veteran of more than three decades in the Senate, and one of his party's leading experts on foreign policy, an area in which polls indicate Obama needs help in his race against Republican rival John McCain.
By approximately six p.m. Saturday, The Los Angeles Times posted: "In case you're one of the thousands of people interested in the Barack Obama Democratic presidential campaign who signed up to be the first to learn his vice presidential pick via high-tech e-mail and text message, ours finally arrived." As Jose Antonio Vargas explained in "Obama's Text: Message Received, With a Few Garbles" (Washington Post):
For more than a year, Obama's online operations has aggressively marketed their text program -- which comes with its own ringtones and wallpapers, standard fare in the mobile commercial industry -- to collect names, e-mail addresses and Zip codes. Scott Goodstein, who overlooks the program, spent three weeks in South Carolina before the Palmetto State's primary to test the new medium's use in campaigning. Nearly two weeks ago, Obama sent a message saying he would notify supporters of his vice presidential choice via text, promising supporters that they'd be "the first to know."
That promise was undercut when news organizations confirmed around 1 a.m. today that Obama had settled on Biden. The announcement was sent about two hours later -- apparently with no glitches, said Kevin Bertman of Distributive Networks, the District-based mobile company hired by the campaign to send its texts.
So they couldn't even get the texts to their supporters before the press got wind of the news.
Slogans you can believe . . . are meaningless.
Biden is 65-years-old. John McCain, presumed GOP presidential nominee, is 71-years-old. That might harm the Barack campaign to constantly whisper that McCain is too old.
Speaking to a crowd on Saturday (endlessly played on cable news channel), Biden's age was readily apparent. As was the fact that he looked a lot like John Sharpe. Sharpe was part of a "Dream Ticket" in Texas. He was running for Lt. Governor, Ron Kirk was running for the US Senate. If you never heard about that, click here for the BBC story but note the BBC gets it wrong. Ron Kirk was never "man of the people." As mayor of Dallas he was bought and paid for Big Money. The most populated area in Texas is the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Kirk didn't even run commercials there. He also campaigned when he felt like it.
The ticket flopped. Democratic 'leadership' heard of it and that's why Bill Richardson was never going to be on the ticket. Tony Sanchez -- whom Texas community members say is the only one who had guts -- was also part of that 2002 Dream Ticket. True or false, the perception of 'leadership' is that Latino Sanchez and African-American Kirk cancelled each other in terms of support (with Latinos supporting Sanchez and African-Americans supporting Kirk but neither group stronly supporting the other candidate). True or false, 'leadership' states that is proof of the so-called Black-Brown divide.
The idea of a Latino serving under Obama, we were told, would strike some not as progressive, but as repression. If that theory is true (we don't buy it), one has to wonder how Biden being on the ticket under Barack will strike some groups?
So focused on the so-called Brown-Black divide was 'leadership,' they never questioned that.
Also worth noting, in the much played clips of the two with their wives, Michelle Obama again demonstrated she does not know how to dress wearing some fussy floral pattern when a solid would have been more effective and certainly looked as if it hadn't been made from a slip cover. Clothes are an issue when you wear something that bleeds on camera.
In other news, 34 years after Time magazine declared the newly elected Senator Biden a 'face for the future,' he's presumably on a presidential ticket. Remember that when you think you're about ready to stop laughing at Biden echoing Barack's slogan of, "This is our time!"