CHICAGO - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, trying to step up his role of attack dog, on Monday labeled Republican John McCain as a “profoundly out of touch” politician using dishonorable tactics to try to win the White House.
In excerpts from a speech he is to give in Michigan, Biden, running mate to presidential hopeful Barack Obama, said both McCain’s policies and his campaign strategies mirror those of the unpopular U.S. President George W. Bush.
“We’ve seen this movie before, folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original,” Biden will say in the speech he will give in St. Clair Shores, Mich.
“If you’re ready for four more years of George Bush, John McCain is your man. Just as George Herbert Walker Bush was nicknamed ‘Bush 41′ and his son is known as ‘Bush 43,’ John McCain could easily become known as ‘Bush 44,’” Biden plans to say.
Opinion polls show a dead-even race between Obama and McCain with less than two months to go before the Nov. 4 election.
Helped by his pick of Sarah Palin as his No. 2, McCain erased the lead that Obama held for most of the summer, leaving many Democrats nervous and impatient for Obama to begin hitting back at attacks they contend are straight out of the playbook of former Bush adviser Karl Rove.
In lambasting McCain, Biden is stepping into the traditional role for a vice presidential candidate of attack dog. He has been critical of McCain in previous speeches but Monday’s speech marked an escalation of the tone. Part of Biden’s difficulty in playing the attack-dog role effectively is that he is not getting nearly the media spotlight that Palin, a new face on the national political scene, is receiving.
Recalling the many years he has been a Senate colleague of McCain, an Arizona senator, Biden accused McCain of selling out his principles to win the election.
“The campaign a person runs says everything about the way they’ll govern. John McCain has decided to bet the house on the politics perfected by Karl Rove,” Biden says in the speech.
McCain campaign spokesman Ben Porritt dismissed Biden’s comments as those of a “long-time Washington insider, entrenched in the status quo.”
“Regardless of their rhetoric, Barack Obama and his running mate can’t distance themselves from their records which gives voters zero confidence that they can deliver change when we need it the most,” Porritt said.
The Obama campaign also released a new ad saying McCain was taking “the low road” in some of his campaign’s ads and attacks on the Democratic candidate, citing commentary in newspapers such as the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune that criticized the McCain ads.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Biden during a campaign stop in Ohio in late August.)
Trackback
44 comments so far
Previous | 3 | 2 | 1 | Next
[...] speaking of these swift boat attacks, I don’t know why they won’t let me be more of an attack dog for the Democrats. Isn’t that the job of the Vice President during the campaign season? I get to say some things, [...]
- Posted by The Secret Diary of Joe Biden » Monday, October 13th, 8:35pmNow its time for Obama to be more than uplifting, but to show the same PASSION (fight!) as Biden.
Its not a time to be calm and collected, it’s time to be ready to take off the kiddie gloves and fight with FACTS and not slander and side-issues.
Obama 08!!!!!
- Posted by Nick1. I don’t think that.
2. Not many disagree with going to war with alqueada. I think it’s more to do with Iraq not having WMD. No tie with alqueada. Oil not paying for war. Building Iraq while the U.S is falling apart. Government creating false documents of Saddam Hussein buying yellow cake. All while the world has lost respect for us. This is where you need to step back look at all we have done and say enough is enough.
3. I think if you ask most Americans they are paying more now. Gas is up. Food is up. health insurance is up. All of this and my pay check isn’t up. It’s not a tax cut if you put it on the credit card because U.S. National Debt as % of GDP is way up… 1%, who already pay 50% that only points out the disparity between middle class and rich. When someone makes in 1 hour more then a working man or woman does in a year I will only smile when they raise the tax for them. You can can shed a tear all you want. The class war started in the middle class first.
4. I hunt. I don’t fear guns or to kill. I also don’t disagree with you.
5. The truth is nice for a change. I don’t see a case were you have to create propaganda to your own people. Georgia attacked Russia so it was provoked not unprovoked. I like my government to tell me the truth. Not drive me into wars.
6. I agree with your interpretation of separation of church and state. Just don’t pass religious law onto me cause I have no religion and thats my freedom. The whole Gods war used by religious zealots on the right really does not help matters lets keep that separate. I will not send my son on the religious rights holy wars. I still beleive if God is talking to you, you need a straight jacket not leader of the free world.
- Posted by JeffHey Reuters, no problem if it’s a lib attacking a repub, right? How about equal time? Might help fix your reputation as a far-left PR branch of Obama’s campaign.
dubs,
It helps these long-winded posts of yours if you get even one thing right.
1. Anyone who thinks there are both 60 dem and 60 republican senators is an uneducated clown. That’s you.
2. Several terrorist attacks under Clinton that we did not respond to. One under Bush, none since we’ve used our military in response.
3. Taxes are down for everyone under Bush, which is why Treasury revenues are at record highs. Why should the wealthiest 1%, who already pay 50% of total income tax collected, foot even more of your bill?
4. The asinine gun argument is one most liberals won’t even try anymore. Just because you’re afraid of guns and watch too much TV doesn’t change the fact that areas with strict gun control have the highest crime rates, and those with high gun ownership have the lowest crime rates. Read a book.
5. Georgia attacked Russia? Wow, you ought to make sure the rest of the world knows that. Why would you keep that to yourself so long?
6. The non-sequitir in your rambling and idiotic post about separation of church and state is probably a reference to what you and your fellow Church of Secularism members parishoners believe is something that has any truth or basis in history whatsoever. Sadly, it is not. Thomas Jefferson once replied in a letter to a church that was seeking to become a state-sponsored church that it was best to keep the wall of separatation between the two. This is directly in line with the first amendment, which protects religions from discrimination by the state. This also happens to directly contradict what you wrongly believe, that there can be no religion in government. It means government cannot interfere with or abridge the rights of any religion. Keeping religious beliefs or people out of government would be exactly that.
- Posted by Matt