Joe says farewell. His last YouTube campaign video:
And here’s Chris Dodd’s good-bye. We at PrezVid will miss him, for he made more creative (if long) use of YouTube in his campaign. Apparently that won’t win you elections yet.
Meanwhile, Mike Gravel is NOT saying good-bye (and who thought he would ever?). This is his briefest video ever, telling Olberman that reports of his political demise are exaggerated.
Secretary of State, um, presidential candidate Joe Biden talks about the crisis in Pakistan. He says he had a conversation with Benazir Bhutto today and will be talking with Pervez Musharraf tomorrow.
Sound Bite: “This administration, when it walked away from Afghanistan, figuratively speaking, I think that was a sign to Musharraf ‘I better cut my own deal with these folks in the Northwest province.’ ”
Joe Biden went on the attack against Rudy Giuliani and his experience in the last debate, and now Rudy’s flummoxed, flipflopping (the Biden campaign’s word) on whether Biden himself has foreign policy experience.
Joe Biden continues on his roll against Rudy, quoting the former mayor wondering who’s farther ahead on nuclear weapons, Iran or Korea. Getaloada the cocked eyebrow at the end.
It’s turning out to be fascinating watching what sound bites the campaigns pick after debates to represent their best moments. Below, we have John Edwards lecturing us about lobbyists. Here is Joe Biden’s “straight talk” — their description.
First, on the resolution for war: He says voting for the war raised the price of oil, emboldened George Bush to do what he wants, and drove moderates in Afghanistan and Pakistan underground. “All it has done is hurt us.”
Next, Iran: “What is the greatest threat to America: 2.6 kilograms of enriched uranium in Tehran or an out-of-control Pakistan? It’s not even close.”
Rudy Giuliani: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and verb and 9/11… This man is truly not qualified to be president…. I’m looking forward to running against Rudy Giuliani.”
Chinese toy imports: “If I were president, I’d shut down, flat shut down any imports from China. Period, in terms of toys.”
Joe Biden outlines his health care plan in front of doctors, whose services he used for his own and his children’s health crises. “Thank God y’ll all decided to be doctors.” It’s a 10-minute video (this is the day of long videos) with a long preamble. The meat starts four minutes in.
In a split-screen interview, Josh Marshall treats Markos Moulitsas Daily Kos as a kingmaker and Kos doesn’t demur. Marshall quotes Kos saying that he wouldn’t issue an endorsement but then Kos goes ahead and hands down his tablets.
True to the netroots m.o., he starts with the negative. Kos has completely eliminated Biden and Kucinich. He’s “skeptical” about Clinton. Cough Cough. He has ruled out Edwards over taking public funds, capping his campaign spending. And that leaves Dodd — whom he voted for in a straw poll because “it was a way to reward his behavior in the Iraq debate” — and Obama. “I like Dodd better,” he says. He says he wants Dodd’s rhetoric in Obama’s body (if he ever said that the other way around, there’d be a firestorm). He says Dodd is running on a platform of restoring the Bill of Rights — “I mean, how much more inspiring can you get?” He acknowledges that “a vote for Chris Dodd would probably be a wasted vote.” Sounds like a tapioca endorsement of Obama. He complains that Obama is playing it safe, “which you only get to do if you’re the frontrunner.” And he’s not. “It’s very uninspiring,” Kos complains. He contrasts it with the Howard Dean campaign, which “empowered people.” Ah, those were the netroots days.
Kos acknowledges that Clinton has “run the perfect race.” Even as other candidates are getting known, she’s still surging in the polls “and that is pretty damned impressive.” He says she is “ruthlessly on-message.”
Joe Biden turned in his usual solid performance in last night’s debate at Dartmouth College. (Hey, when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.) So, if you like Biden sound bites — and who doesn’t — here they are: Biden on Iraq, sanctuary cities, healthcare (check out Clinton’s mug in the reaction shots on this one), social security, the drinking age, MoveOn.org (“It’s not their party.”), torturing a terrorist, his favorite verse from the Bible and Red Sox vs. Yankees.
But first, here’s Biden slapping around Rudy Giuliani:
There’s a genre of candidate video created in this election: the montage of happy, popular, friendly moments from campaign appearances, over-edited because they can be. They come from someone on the campaign who discovers iMovie on the Mac and says, “I can be a filmmaker, too.” They edit together a bunch of clips and quotes and put them to music. Voila: the three-minute masterpiece. Problem is, they’re usually cheesy, uninformative, and long, and often embarrassing. I don’t know why they bother. Here’s the latest example, from Joe Biden:
