He actually says what he thinks, and he has a detailed plan on how to deal with the Iraq mess.
People like what they hear, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if--yes--he pulls it off and becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
And here is an interview he gave for Salon:
Do you think in the era of YouTube and video cellphones, you can get away with being Joe Biden? I mean being a guy who in the space of two minutes in Cedar Rapids started to tell a joke about Al Gore and the Internet and made a reference to George Wallace in a discussion of healthcare plans.
The answer is probably not. But I'll tell you what -- one of the things I'm not going to do. I'm not going to let that system alter who I am. For example, one of the things that happens is that the public is coming to grips with how to deal with this instant, unfiltered information that may be deliberately mis-edited.
But I think -- and this is naive maybe -- I have confidence that the American people will put this in perspective. Like when one of the bloggers said, "We're going to take back the Democratic Party."
They don't own the Democratic Party. What are they talking about? So, for example, my pointing out George Wallace from 1968 and quoting what he said, somebody could take that out of context and say "Biden quoted Wallace," making it sound like Biden is being favorable about Wallace.
At the end of the day, I think what happens is that people basically take a motion picture of their candidate and not a snapshot of their candidate. It's a little bit like the Barack comment. [Just as he was launching his presidential campaign in late January, Biden gave an interview in which he maladroitly referred to Obama as "articulate and bright and clean."]
Not a serious person in the press thought that I meant anything other than being complimentary. The good news is that I have a 34-year record on civil rights. Nobody, nobody could suggest that I was being prejudiced. But initially on the blogosphere, this was taken in a different context.
The answer is that there are two sides to my being straightforward and candid. And that is, I'm going to get myself in trouble. But the only thing I decided to do -- I can't start trying to calibrate all this stuff. I really believe that at the end of the day, the public in the primaries, as well as the general election, are going to judge me for all of who I am.
Let me squeeze in a money question, since you only raised $2.4 million in the second quarter. Is that because people aren't coming to your fundraisers, or you're not making the calls, or when you call people, instead of giving you $2,300, they write you a check for $500?
I think it is all of the above. But mostly what I think it is is that I have never focused on fundraising. We are in the process of trying to put together a first-rate fundraising operation. A lot of it has to do with organizational structure because where we go, people are responding. I realize that part of it is me, since I haven't from the outset made this a priority.
I haven't done anything political in 20 years. You know what I mean by that?
Easy Senate reelections, no need to raise a large amount of money until now?
I haven't gone out and put together a national fundraising organization. I haven't put together any of this stuff. And the other piece of it is that -- I may be wrong -- I continue to believe that the money is not going to be the difference.
It is what it is. I think it's Iowa and New Hampshire and we'll have enough money to compete there. I think we're going to do fine.
