It is a sad truth that many Americans find being very smart as something that they DON'T WANT in a leader.

I second your emoticon.

what gets me is when someone raises the "intellectually arrogant" argument, why nobody says: I'm very well educated on this topic. I know what I am talking about. I have a degree. That qualifies to speak as an authority. I however, do not farm. So I would not go out into the field and tell a farmer when to plant his crops, harvest, or how much water to use. The farm is an expert in agriculture, and I trust him to be that. Etc.

The whole idea that it is GOOD to be an amateur at politics has always bugged me. It bugs me even more that that's how Bush sold himself, and now McCain is trying to say that no experience is bad. Goddammit, America!

Uh... they aren't going to attack his smartness, and Republicans are somewhat frightened of how much of a working class hero this dude is.
He does have plenty to attack though, but VP's are not too important in their attackableness so much as their ability to attack.

Take in account this guys vulnerabilities:
1. He is not popular among middle and upper middle class white feminists.
2. He has said some racially insensitive things, though they are so bizarre that they won't really be useable (Famous one: "You have to use an Indian accent to buy something at a convenience store." OUCH?)

These two things are not really attack points of conservatives, traditionally. They may attack his ties with Unions, but the gains that Biden will give Obama in PA, MI, NJ, and OH more than eliminate this. I think that he's a pretty good choice. He's a very good strategic pick, and while I would have preferred a real moderate war hero type like Alan Webb, he's way better than a pick of Clinton, or Bayh, or one of these other fly by night democrats.

Sorry, Jim Webb of Virginia. I always call him Alan Webb because I was so used to reading Webb vs Allen in 2006.

baleen, good points. and though he may have said such racially insensitive things as you have mentioned, i tend to over look them for his comments that education needs to be first brought to people of socio-economic disadvantages. then backing that statement up with empirical statistics, if nothing else shows how well he understands the complexities of modernity and its associated ills.

Webb vs. Mitchell, 2006.

absolutely. Biden is a fantastic choice. he fills in obama's gaps and at the same time is one of the few truly rational and logical politicians (like obama) that acknowledges shades of grey in policy.

five star for comment

Bizarro-Biden!

Almost right, but its not actually a "dude". Also she won't be destroyed, but rather utterly and completely annihilated.

phase 2 of his term will be to relocate the white house to Claymont.

Not "can't" but rather "has not". Obama seeming soft is better than coming off as, as the pundits so disgustingly put it, "an angry black man."

Pundits like angry white men though. Maybe Obama chose him to be his muscle. That's some two-fisted no-holds-barred debating.

Imagine this guy taking on Dan Quayle in a veep debate.

bullshit and *malarkey*, he said.

Man it's going to be so weird to have sane, smart people in the White House again.