As someone who has a monumentally small yield as a blogger, this is the first time anyone has ever asked me specifically for my opinion on a topic before, but this morning’s email’s heralded just such an event.  I rather like the idea, and while I have no such marvellous tool as Lis’ Alphabet meme, if anyone else would like to know my opinion on anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Jonic was asking my opinion on Obama’s VP pick Joe Biden, and to be honest, I’m still struggling to have an opinion some three days after I got my email to confirm him as the choice.  (Point of Interest: I signed up to be ‘first to know’ with the Obama campaign directly, in their shrewd move to entice people to donate their mobile numbers and email addresses with the promise of being ‘in the know.’  Unfortunately, my email arrived some ten hours after BBC News had the official announcement off Obama’s website.  Disappointing.)

At first look, he is exactly what the campaign needs.  He has a tremendous amount of weight for those blue-collar voters that supported Hillary, and a great deal of experience on the Hill, most notably in terms of foreign relations.  That said, he is exactly the sort of person Obama was supposed to represent a move away from.  Very old school, very much an old blue dog.  Obama is suggesting that this isn’t the case, that he has managed to stay true to himself despite his years on the hill, blah blah, but let’s not forget this is also someone who voted for the Iraq war, then did the same amount of about-face as Hillary did.

But I do still think that while he may not seem the guy Obama would have liked to have gone for, he is exactly what the campaign needs.  He is in many ways the AntiMcCain.  He too has a massive trauma in his past (his family died in a tragic accident) but does not use it as a crutch in the same way McCain does with his POW experience.  He has been a maverick who sticks to his guns, as opposed to the McCain flipflop, and he knows McCain well, and been a vocal admirer of his.  At first that seems to be a bad thing, and McCain has hammered away quickly at this point, but Biden is far better placed to show up the history McCain has of changing positions to suit his needs.  I foresee a lot of “I remember when John used to support” type of hits.

As well as this, he is well liked by Hillary’s supporters, and may finally bridge the gap.  He is by all accounts a fierce campaigner, great at debating and he may well be a lot better than Obama’s camp have been so far at hitting McCain hard.  I foresee that his experience will bring a lot to bear on Obama’s very untested team, who have so far seemed very willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The truth is, from the moment took on Rove’s minions to run his campaign, McCain has been winning this through underhanded dirty tricks, and the Dem’s just stand there like rabbits in the headlights, wondering where their margin of victory is going.  Yes, the country should at this point be more in mind to vote Democrat, but the media is still Republican owned, and they seem to have forgotten that with the candidate they have chosen (correctly in my opinion) it is going to be a fight.  They need to start fighting, and the choice of Joe Biden is the first sign I’ve seen that they are willing to do so.

So there.  At the start of this post I hadn’t formed an opinion, and now I have.  The wonder of blogging.

I am writing this at work, and need to go home soon, so apologies if I haven’t cited examples.  As always, go see TPM for the best blogging on the election, and the Guardian’s blog is pretty good also.