Please Go Home, Joe Biden

I don't even know why I'm wasting my time on Joe Biden, a guy who has about as much of a chance getting the Democratic nomination for President as Joe Lieberman does (for that matter, as much of a chance as I do). But this is pretty low. Most of the top Presidential candidates are skipping a debate put on by the CBC that is being shown on Fox News. There are legitimate reasons for this, because Fox News is simply not a credible news outlet, and the last time they held a Democratic debate it was a complete debacle. But Biden played the race card in trying to focus the attention on the CBC instead of Fox News.

"The single most important constituency in the Democratic Party -- African Americans, led by the Black Caucus, which are the leadership of the black community, asked us to show for a debate and we're not going to show up?" he said.

"Let me put it this way -- if the African American community stayed home or voted Republican, we're not going to elect another president."

That's not the point and Biden knows it. But he wants to make some cheap points with black voters. This is particularly amusing coming from the guy who approvingly called Barack Obama "clean" (by the way, Obama's skipping the debate, does that mean HE doesn't care about black people?) and burnished his credentials in South Carolina by proudly stating that he's a southerner because Delaware was a slave state (maybe that can be their new state motto; Delaware - Remember, We Were A Slave State!).

But that wasn't the only thing Biden was chatty about. He decided to criticize Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for voting against the Iraq spending bill, buying into the right wing frame that it would "hurt the troops" by cutting off funding for them in the field, which is patently untrue. But that wasn't the most outrageous statement. He defended his own vote to fund the occupation on CNN by saying this:

BIDEN: This gets down to how do you change this war, Wolf?

Do you think the president of the United States, over the next four months -- this is only a four-month funding bill, for four months -- do you think, by us cutting off funding, he's going to withdraw troops?

And what do you think is going to happen to those troops in the field, as they run out of money?

Do you think this guy's going to pull them out? I'm not about to do that.

He's literally saying that the President would defy Congress and hold American troops hostage in a war zone, so there's no choice but to give in to his demands. That's the weakest, most infuriating statement I've seen on Iraq yet. Funding the war because the President won't listen anyway? Why hold Congress in session, in that case?

Joe Biden can go on that debate on Fox News, and then stay there as an analyst. Don't go back to Washington if you don't think your job is worth doing.