If vice-presidential picks are a reflection of a campaign's conclusion midway through the general election, then this is what Biden says about the Obama campaign's lessons thus far: Voters don't believe in change. Not yet, anyway, They're open to it. But they're skeptical. They need to be persuaded, cajoled, convinced.There was a hope in the early days of the Obama campaign that simple, sharp difference would be enough. Obama was different in aesthetics and experience and age and ideas. Different would assert change. Hence the long and enlivening Kathleen Sebelius boomlet. Obama/Sebelius would have represented change. Visually, her and Obama on a stage together would have been the most powerful image of political transformation in decades. But a choice like her presupposed belief. Otherwise, you'd be adorning a cathedral that had no promise of parishioners. As the election wore on, though, and Obama's poll numbers slackened and fell, they realized they needed to make their case. They needed an arguer. Someone able to make the case that the other guy is wrong, and Obama is right. That's, fundamentally, what Biden represents. Biden doesn't presuppose belief. He's a persuader. Sometimes at great length, sometimes to the point of virtual self parody, but fundamentally, his political style has always been to argue until everyone else agrees.For progressives, this is encouraging pick. More encouraging than Bayh, or Kaine, or even, in a way, Sebelius. More encouraging than picks who might have been more progressive, but less pugnacious. Elevating Biden suggests that the Obama campaign has decided to have an argument. Not try to win on momentum and inspiration and GOTV, but to engage, and win, an argument about which set of ideas is better for the future of the country. And in Biden, they've engaged at the point of greatest vulnerability and opportunity for Democrats: National security.A political history of the past few years in Democratic politics is a history of the party's failed attempts to dance away from foreign policy discussions. There was the Thomas Frank school of thought: Pivot from "national security to economic insecurity." There was the George Lakoff approach: Reframe the language. There was the Kerry approach: "How can they be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them in Boise?" But even if these approaches had succeeded -- they didn't -- they would still have bespoke long-term weakness in the Democratic Party: A fundamental inability to win arguments about American foreign policy. A Democrat has not been elected during wartime in over 50 years. A healthy party cannot only prosper when the world is at peace and the waters are quiet. But seven years of Republican incompetence and failure have generated tremendous mistrust in the conservative foreign policy approach. Iraq was a historic blunder, Osama bin Laden is loose, America's international standing is dismal. There's an opening for Democrats to press the advantage, argue that they, in fact, have the better record, and the sounder ideas, on national security. But they have to actually engage the argument. They can't hope that events will do the work for them. Picking Biden, the Obama campaign signaled that this is a project they want to take on, and a project they realize will have to be engaged affirmatively and aggressively. The fact of Obama, the fact of Iraq, it's not enough. You need to actually win the argument.Imaged used under a Creative Commons license from Reuben Ingber. WINNING THE ARGUMENT.
If vice-presidential picks are a reflection of a campaign's conclusion midway through the general election, then this is what Biden says about the Obama campaign's lessons thus far: Voters don't believe in change. Not yet, anyway, They're open to it. But they're skeptical. They need to be persuaded, cajoled, convinced.There was a hope in the early days of the Obama campaign that simple, sharp difference would be enough. Obama was different in aesthetics and experience and age and ideas. Different would assert change. Hence the long and enlivening Kathleen Sebelius boomlet. Obama/Sebelius would have represented change. Visually, her and Obama on a stage together would have been the most powerful image of political transformation in decades. But a choice like her presupposed belief. Otherwise, you'd be adorning a cathedral that had no promise of parishioners. As the election wore on, though, and Obama's poll numbers slackened and fell, they realized they needed to make their case. They needed an arguer. Someone able to make the case that the other guy is wrong, and Obama is right. That's, fundamentally, what Biden represents. Biden doesn't presuppose belief. He's a persuader. Sometimes at great length, sometimes to the point of virtual self parody, but fundamentally, his political style has always been to argue until everyone else agrees.For progressives, this is encouraging pick. More encouraging than Bayh, or Kaine, or even, in a way, Sebelius. More encouraging than picks who might have been more progressive, but less pugnacious. Elevating Biden suggests that the Obama campaign has decided to have an argument. Not try to win on momentum and inspiration and GOTV, but to engage, and win, an argument about which set of ideas is better for the future of the country. And in Biden, they've engaged at the point of greatest vulnerability and opportunity for Democrats: National security.A political history of the past few years in Democratic politics is a history of the party's failed attempts to dance away from foreign policy discussions. There was the Thomas Frank school of thought: Pivot from "national security to economic insecurity." There was the George Lakoff approach: Reframe the language. There was the Kerry approach: "How can they be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them in Boise?" But even if these approaches had succeeded -- they didn't -- they would still have bespoke long-term weakness in the Democratic Party: A fundamental inability to win arguments about American foreign policy. A Democrat has not been elected during wartime in over 50 years. A healthy party cannot only prosper when the world is at peace and the waters are quiet. But seven years of Republican incompetence and failure have generated tremendous mistrust in the conservative foreign policy approach. Iraq was a historic blunder, Osama bin Laden is loose, America's international standing is dismal. There's an opening for Democrats to press the advantage, argue that they, in fact, have the better record, and the sounder ideas, on national security. But they have to actually engage the argument. They can't hope that events will do the work for them. Picking Biden, the Obama campaign signaled that this is a project they want to take on, and a project they realize will have to be engaged affirmatively and aggressively. The fact of Obama, the fact of Iraq, it's not enough. You need to actually win the argument.Imaged used under a Creative Commons license from Reuben Ingber. 
