Has Obama just blinked? His selection of Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a running mate appears to be a recognition that he needs someone with national security experience on the ticket. This provides an opening for the McCain campaign. It also complicates Obama’s argument that national security is all about judgement. Just to compound thing, Obama and Biden made different judgement calls on Iraq back in 2002.
The smart sides to the pick are more on the domestic and personal side. Domestically, Biden is a champion of the kind of downscale voters that Obama desperately needs to woo to his side. Also by picking someone who blundered badly in talking about race in the primaries, Obama has shown that he has no desire to get hung up on this stuff.
Before the tightening in the polls and the crisis in Georgia, the expectation was that Obama would double-down on his message of change with his VP pick.
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