Senator Joe Biden, D-DE.

Democrats and "Foot-in-Mouth Disease"

By now, those of us who follow Democratic Presidential politics have heard Senator and candidate Joe Biden, D-DE, put his foot in it with his remarks about fellow Senator and candidate Barack Obama, D-IL. For those who haven't heard yet, Biden's exact comments were, "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man," as told to the New York Observer. Ugh. Where to begin? Not only does he imply that previous African-American Presidential hopefuls were unclean, dumb, and not articulate, he also, by extension, paints the African-American race with that brush. On top of that, he makes Democrats in general look like fools. Didn't anyone clue him in that just one racially charged word, spoken at the wrong time, can end a candidacy? If he wants to know, all he has to do is ask former Senator George Allen, R-VA, who lost a close Senate race to Democrat Jim Webb at least partially on the basis of the word "macaca," spoken in reference to a campaign worker of Asian descent. What makes Biden's gaffe worse than Allen's is the size of the stage (Presidential vs. Senatorial) and the fact that Allen, for a little while at least, had plausible deniability. After all, few people knew what "macaca" meant until the national media looked it up for them, and for a while, Allen could maintain that he'd just made the term up. Biden has no such place to hide. While this may be for the best - I believe the Democratic Party's best hopes for 2008 lie with front runners Obama and Hillary Clinton, D-NY - it is always unfortunate to see a prominent Democrat make a fool of him or herself. The problem is, Democrats seem to make a habit of doing so. John Kerry's (D-MA) mangled joke about uneducated people getting "stuck in Iraq," Dick Durbin (D-IL) and his ill-advised comparison of American servicemen and their interrogation techniques to Nazis, the aforementioned Jim Webb and his wanting to punch the President for sending his son to Iraq - all of this speaks to a lack of focus and discipline among the most prominent of Democrats. I, for one, would like to see it stopped. While no politician can always speak or behave perfectly, Democrats, especially those seeking the Oval Office, have a higher responsibility. They cannot afford to lose this one, not while there is a war that needs to be stopped. And while I am on the subject, Democrats in both houses of Congress need to toughen up, bite the bullet, and cut off funding for the war. Since the slim majority in the Senate couldn't round up 60 votes for a non-binding (as in useless) resolution condemning the troop surge, a vote to defund seems unlikely anytime soon. This is unfortunate. Those who have seen the military drama "A Few Good Men" likely remember when Jack Nicholson's character remarks that a Marine is "in the business of saving lives." Right now, our legislative branch of government needs to be in the business of saving our troops, and they cannot allow verbal missteps or political expediency to stop them. Time to toughen up, Democrats, and do the right thing. This war needs to be over. See related article.