What do you think of when you hear the phrase “Obama Joe Biden”? It could have a subliminal effect.

Anyway, I think that Jonah has the best take on the veep pick:

He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there. He was correct, for example, that Congress needed to have a real debate over the war. I think he has some obvious verbal intelligence. But, again, what’s fascinating — and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts — is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you’d expect him to be following it around in a gray Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization’s usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don’t understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I’m going to get right to it and besides these aren’t the droids you’re looking for…

This is going to be a very entertaining election. I think that they’re going to be a double-barrelled gaffe machine.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jay Nordlinger:

All politicians have sizable egos, but this may be the most self-loving ticket ever. There’s an old saying, “He’ll die in his own arms” — that can apply to both of them. (I’ve thought of it in connection with McCain, too.) And Obama and Biden are two of the gassiest politicians in all the land — they are rhetorically impossible.

I suspect that after a couple non-stop months of the Joebama Show, not that many are going to look forward to four years of it.

And the McCain campaign was ready to go with the ad.

[Update at noon]

Hey we not only have a messiah, but a veep who’s a certified genius. Just ask him.

[Update half an hour later]

PJM has a link roundup of reax.

[Update in the afternoon]

Man, Limbaugh must think he died and went to heaven. I’ll bet he has a huge library of Biden audio gaffes, enough for fresh material every week from here to November.

I’ve never heard of Chet Edwards. And it strikes me that having a running mate with the last name “Edwards” is a little impolitic right now, given the current problems with the one named “John.”

At least he seems to have a lot more experience than Obama. But then, he’d have had trouble coming up with someone who doesn’t. More signs of an attempt to appear to be moving to the center, and perhaps pick up Texas and do better in the south (though that still seems unlikely).

[Update a couple minutes later]

Actually, in reading his bio, I’d think that this would be an unbeatable ticket if he was at the top, instead of veep. But he’s not, and it won’t be. All of this presumes, of course, that he actually is the pick. We’ll find out soon enough.

[Update in the afternoon]

There are a lot of reasons to think that this is just a head fake. He’s a very conservative Democrat, and it would probably push the nutroots over the edge to vote for Nader.

[Another one a couple minutes later]

More thoughts from Geraghty:

Sure, he’s very pro-choice, rated F by the NRA, and manages to hang on to a central Texas House district. And Pelosi recommended him. But the debate would consist almost entirely of the GOP vice-presidential candidate saying, “I agree with Chet’s old position, the one he had before he put his manhood in a blind trust and flip-flopped to agree with Obama’s liberal position.” Edwards would constantly be in the awkward position of defending positions he doesn’t agree with. Add that to the fact that 90+ percent of Americans know nothing about him, it’s a formula for disaster.

Let’s hope he does it.

Here’s a new blog devoted (at least for now) to covering the DNC next week and events leading up to it.

[Via former Traverse Citian and current Denverite Thomas James]

A lot has been made (appropriately) of the hypocrisy of the warm mongers, and particularly Saint Al himself, and John Edwards. But John McCain is pretty much just as bad on that score:

Like any limousine liberal, McCain prefers the symbolic gesture to walking the walk. In our News interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove. As with Politico’s question about home ownership, he didn’t know and had to ask a nearby aide. “A Cadillac CTS,” she told him. But then the senator was quick to point out that he had bought his daughter a Prius — the prefect halo symbol for his green pretensions.

Though it should be noted that he almost certainly actually did know how many houses he had, if not what kind of car.

If Tim Kaine is the Veep pick, this will be a particularly devastating ad.

Not that that’s a bad thing…

I won’t claim to know Juliette Ochieng, but I had a wonderful dinner with her (and several others, but I sat next to) a couple years ago in LA’s Chinatown, and I’ve read many of her blog posts and opinion pieces. I’m neither religious, or conservative, and I’m sure that there are many issues on which we’d disagree, but if I had a choice between her and Barack Obama for president, I’d vote for her in a Chicago minute. And not just because I had dinner with her.

The black-on-black bigotry displayed in the link against a true African-American woman who criticizes the messiah is disappointing, but by no means surprising.

OK, this new (527, not McCain campaign) ad is going to leave a mark. There are still many voters who have never heard of Bil Ayers, and the coverup going on at UIC is just going to make it look worse.

Of course, the Obama camp also started another spork fight with the McCain campaign, and is getting hammered again.

Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people “cling” to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?

The reality is that Barack Obama’s plans to raise taxes and opposition to producing more energy here at home as gas prices skyrocket show he’s completely out of touch with the concerns of average Americans.

The problem with their strategy, as is often the case, is that they project their own class envy on the voters (just as they project many of their other personal issues).

But by and large, Americans don’t envy the rich–they want to be rich. Let’s leave aside the amusing fact that by the new Democrat standard that white guys who marry rich women and end up with several houses are to be demonized as out of touch, that John Kerry shouldn’t have had a prayer of getting their nomination.

So-called progressives are envious of the wealthy in the classical sense–they not only want what others have, but they want the others not to have it. In fact, the latter is more important to them than the former, so they promote policies that equally distribute poverty, in effect if not intent.

But the American people don’t want to take John McCain’s houses from him. They just want more house of their own. It’s very hard for me to believe that the number of domiciles that John McCain has, or whether or not he knows how many, is going to be an issue on which the election will turn. And as already noted by the McCain campaign, Barack Obama isn’t the best messenger in that regard. Nor were John Edwards or John Kerry. I think they’d certainly prefer a guy who came by his houses honestly–by marrying them–to one who acquired his with the help of a convicted felon for favors still unknown.

But what I don’t really understand is the McCain strategy at this point. Less than a week before the convention, Senator Obama’s polls aren’t looking very good, but there’s real dynamite in some of the internals of them, in which one poll showed Hillary! ahead of McCain by several points. So who do they want to run against?

If they weaken him too much this week, the Donkeys may come to their senses and come up with another nominee next week. On the other hand, in doing so, they’d shred the party. Of course, the optimal situation is for Obama to come out the nominee, but one badly bloodied by a huge obstreperous floor fight, so maybe they’re betting that the Dems won’t be able to jettison their flawed messiah without even more damage to the party. So it’s in the Republican’s interest for them to finally nominate Obama, but in the weakest possible state, and the worse things look for him going into the convention, the more likely that there will be a movement to oust him. But they should hope that it’s not successful.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s more on Senator Obama and Tony Rezko.