Not Joe?

Have we won a reprieve? By the “logic” of Keith Olbermann and his trusty liberal pundits, the answer must be Yes: Joe Biden won’t be Obama’s VP choice and neither will Evan Bayh (whew?) or (alas) Bill Richardson. They all have scheduled speakers’ spots on the Wednesday night when “the next Vice President of the United States” will address the Democratic delegates assembled in Denver. Note that Chris Dodd isn’t on the list. That could be a hopeful sign – especially if he isn’t forced to deep six his opposition to Bush’s War on the Constitution or his proposal for a carbon tax in order to accommodate Obama’s rightward surge.

If only Obama would stay on vacation! It makes it easier to hope he wins when he doesn’t say or do anything. Better to let the doddering John McCain sink himself. That’s what McCain has been doing -- with Georgia on his mind, and with his handlers finding it increasingly difficult to stifle his “straight talking,” “maverick” mouth. On Georgia, see this piece in The San Francisco Chronicle by Robert Scheer and, better yet, this one by Seumus Milne in The Guardian. Bill Clinton’s chickens from Kosovo are coming home to roost! Will the Democrats notice? There is no sign of it.

Neither are these same Democrats able to look beyond their noses at the latest from the “vast right wing conspiracy” – hack writer Jerome Corsi’s attack book, Obama Nation. The swift-boater is back, this time with a synoptic gospel compiled from the dregs of talk radio. Obama et. al. have been quick with rebuttals, so maybe the danger will pass. But will the Democrats be concerned that they too are guilty – by (intimate) association? Not likely. This is all the more ironic at a moment when John Edwards’ inexplicably thoughtless intimacies have helped to accelerate the party’s turn to the right.

The editor-in-chief of Corsi’s publisher, Threshold Editions (an imprint of Simon and Shuster, which is owned, in turn, by “liberal” CBS) is Dick Cheney’s co-thinker and girl Friday, Mary Matalin, loving wife of Bill and Hillary’s celebrated attack dog, James Carville (of “it’s the economy, stupid” fame). It’s not news that that hideously gruesome twosome work both sides of the street. Neither should it be news that the street is so narrow that cohabitation can and does take place across it. But, of course, it is news to most Democrats and especially to those diehard Hillary fans whom the Obamamaniacs will be mightily placating at Denver and in the following weeks.

That’s why we should savor this moment – with Obama away and with a chance (still) of a Vice Presidential choice of someone with comparatively decent politics. Once the nauseatingly over-produced infomercial they call a convention starts, it will become necessary, as Nietzsche might say, resolutely to turn away one’s gaze.