September 13, 2007 9:23 PM
With a new endorsement, can Biden ketchup?
View image Photo by M.E. Sprengelmeyer
For Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, this week's new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll must have been about as appetizing as a dirt sandwich.
In the all-important, first caucus state of Iowa, he was tied with Rep. Dennis Kucinich in fifth place among Democrats. At 2 percent, he was 26 percentage points behind front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
What he needs right now is a whole lot of ketchup -- or catch-up, if you prefer.
Well, on Thursday his campaign got some new sauce when state House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy endorsed him at the Iowa Statehouse. Our friends at IowaPolitics.com have that story HERE.
That could explain Biden's smile when he arrived at a crowded diner in Atlantic, Iowa, for a lunchtime event on Thursday. The smile soon disappeared as he gave a grim assessment of the war in Iraq -- an issue that has come to dominate all others on Biden's agenda.
Like other Democratic contenders, Biden has been a harsh critic of President Bush's war strategy. But he also has been pushing his fellow Democrats to talk more realistically about the dangers of withdrawing U.S. forces too quickly.
Biden's appearance in Atlantic came just hours before Bush spoke to the nation in a televised address, promising to bring some U.S. troops home by the middle of 2008. Biden accused the president of biding time in Iraq and preparing to hand the problem over to the next president.
"He has no intention of ending this war... If it's me he hands it off to, I will cauterize this wound immediately," Biden told a crowd of mostly middle-aged Atlantic residents.
As he spoke, he sometimes had to dodge a waitress delivering sodas, sandwiches and milk shakes to audience members. At one point, he interrupted himself to go find someone a bottle of ketchup. At another point, facing a question about the war, he went to the wall and outlined an invisible map of Iraq.
View image Photo by M.E. Sprengelmeyer
Biden is one of the more animated candidates in the race for president. He's also one of the more experienced, with 34 years in the U.S. Senate -- but still, at age 64, younger than nearly half of his Senate colleagues. (Biden always is careful to point that out.)
His vision for Iraq -- one that calls for partitioning the country into three, semi-autonomous ethnic regions -- is one that wins him creativity points, even from some of his rivals. But still, he's stuck at 2 percent in Iowa.
And so he still repeats his old joke -- as he did again to an audience member Thursday -- that if he had a full head of hair maybe he'd be on his way to the White House. (Apparently he's unfamiliar with the sparse hairstyles of Republicans like Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson, or their higher showings in the polls.)
With his biggest verbal gaffes in his past, Biden regularly wins high praise in presidential debates. He has told supporters he's sorry for his past fundraising woes, but he has run television ads in Iowa in recent months.
So why is he stuck at 2 percent? Even some of his fans are shaking their heads.
"If he had a chance, I'd support him," said Gary Comes, 69, a retiree (and Newt Gingrich look-alike) who shook Biden's hand at the diner on Thursday. "I like his stand on the war. I like his experience. He has a lot of class."
So, by that logic anyway, if Biden had more supporters, then he might win more support.
He's in a Catch 22. And what he needs is ketchup.
View image Photo by M.E. Sprengelmeyer
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