Jake Tapper, hardest working man in the 08 cycle, continues his
coverage of the ever declining mental faculties of Joe Biden,
Senator. For all the coverage given the family affairs of
Governor Sarah Palin, precious little has been given to the
rambling, bizarre statements of Smilin' Joe Biden since his
convention speech. And there's so much good stuff here, too! Just
the other day in Florida, for example, where he went on a 75 minute
riff:

The evening was full of Biden-isms, including the inevitable
Obama/Osama slip, made when Biden was discussing the mountainous
Afghanistan-Pakistan border "where Obama, Osama Bin Laden lives,
and Obama wants to go to get him."

Look, we know you want to keep pretending Biden is going to stop
flubbing this, but he's not. He may keep doing it all the way into
the second year of an Obama term. And a lot more, too:

At another moment, he said, "when I hear people say, ‘Hey Joe,
geez, I understand your values. I connect with you. But I don’t
know about that other guy.’ Let me tell you something. Let me tell
you something. If Barack Obama grew up in my neighborhood in
Scranton or Claymont or Wilmington, Delaware, he would have been
the guy who had my back. If Barack Obama had grown up in my
neighborhood, he would have been the same guy he is now.

"I’ve got to tell you, I’m tired," Biden continued. "Let me tell
you. If you’re looking for a very sophisticated, Harvard graduate
who went to Columbia undergrad and was president of the Law Review,
he’s totally intellectual. Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This
guy is steel. This guy is steel, and I assure you that."

Tapper makes the obvious point that Obama-Biden isn't exactly in
need of solidification of the people who want a sophisticated Law
Review Harvard-Columbia intellectual in the office. That already
exists. You might have heard of their party.

At another point, Biden riffed on being the older presence on
the ticket, saying, "my role in this campaign is I’m the old man. I
really thought I was still in pretty good shape. But I watched when
they, when Barack, as they say, 'rolled out,' his, his, Vice
President nominee. Half of the people in America thought I was
going to get 'rolled out.' I don’t know. And I was listening to one
of the news broadcasts after we had that great event in
Springfield, Illinois, and there...was a runway to get up to the,
to get up to the microphone from the door we came out. And I came
out, and it was a long way away, I didn’t want to hold people up,
so I started jogging. Next morning, I listen, I think it was Gwen
Ifill, who I love, Gwen Ifill said, you know, something to the
effect that, 'It was a great speech, but Biden shouldn’t run.' I
thought, What are you talking about I shouldn’t run? What do you
mean I shouldn’t run? So, you know, I don’t like young guys
anymore."

I don't have any idea what the last part means.

Ben Domenech