Pre-election Post-Mortem...

So I haven’t been here all that much recently. So, sue me. Cancel your subscriptions, and I’ll gladly refund whatever you’re due.

Seriously, I have recently been alternately busy and lazy. We’ve got a wedding coming up. I don't have much directly to do with that, but it is another thing going on in the house that keeps others busy. I’m spending a bunch of my online time learning to invest and on That-Forum-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, frequently discussing the same sorts of things I’d be putting up here.

However, on my re-entry here, and I may live to regret these words, I thought I’d put up my Pre-Election Post-Mortem.

This morning Obama announced his Vice Presidential pick as Joe Biden.

Yes, that’s right. Joe. Biden.

And, in my mind, this pick pretty much nails down my view that Obama is going down in flames. Here’s why…

Obama’s Process

• Obama has always tried to appeal to the younger voter, and I think that’s smart for him. In his Veep pick, he said that he’d make the announcement via text-mail, and again, I think that’s smart. The text vehicle is perfect for the younger voter he’s appealing to, and he’s gathering tons of cellphone numbers which he can certainly use for future messages/fundraising.
• However……Obama delayed his announcement until the Friday before his convention was to start. If he were really smart, he would have announced his pick on Wednesday at about 3pm eastern. That way he’d be certain to gather a “Breaking News” flash from all the networks for that night’s news and talkshows, plus he’d dominate the news cycle for the following Thursday and probably Friday (not to mention the Sunday morning political talk shows).
• Late Friday evening, after everyone had spent the day looking at their cell phones waiting with bated breath for some word from Obama, the word came down that the announcement would be made 10am Saturday morning. Fine. Everybody went to bed expecting to have their texts in the morning.
• ….Only to wake up and find that the announcement had been sent out at about 3am Saturday morning. The Hopium Smokers™ cannot be happy about missing the text that they had signed up to read first.

Obama has had to deal with the distractions of the Edwards scandal and the Olympics. That said, he flubbed his announcement by delaying until Saturday and by not testing his text-messaging before his announcement. He needs every little bit of bounce he can get, and at nearly every opportunity, he's whiffing at the ball.

Obama’s Pick
There is plenty to wonder about Obama’s pick of Biden. I’m sure the McCain camp has been working through all the possibilities for months now. But off the top of my head, here are the questions I have…

• Joe “I think that I stand by the statement [that Obama is not ready]” Biden.
• Joe “Plagiarism” Biden
• Joe “ [A]rticulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” Biden
• Joe “Been in the Senate since 1973” Biden
  Bonus Snark: Q. Where was Obama in 1973? A. In seventh grade.
• Joe “Delaware’s 3 Electoral Votes” Biden
• Joe “Never more than 3% of the vote” Biden
• Joe “Yea on the Iraq War Authorization” Biden
• Joe “Negative Net Worth” Biden
• Joe “The Senator from MBNA” Biden

OK. That’s enough…I think you get the idea. While Obama may view that Biden offers his ticket everything that he does not—foreign policy experience being primary—he also comes with a fair amount of baggage. Obama’s Biden pick allows McCain to bring along someone like Pawlenty or Palin as the younger, less loose-cannon-ish, and baggage-free alternative (although Palin does have her problems too).

Obama’s Future
Obama still has a P.U.M.A. problem that he will have to work through next week. I don’t think that Hillary herself is stupid or arrogant enough (but who knows) to seriously mount a Convention challenge to Obama, but this lack of unity, at this point especially, is a problem for Obama. That said, the very idea that Hillary has had to form her own “whip teams” speaks to Obama’s weakness at his own convention (not to mention bringing up some disturbing images).

The Democrat Party Future
This is an I-told-you-so moment for the Republicans and conservatives in general.

The D’s should have got on board with removing Bill Clinton from office. They’d have lost the election by a larger margin in 2000 than they did, but by not doing so, they immediately allowed Hillary to be elected to the Senate as nothing more than America’s Most Scorned Woman. Then, as a Senator, she became the party’s “inevitable” primary candidate in 2008. Her “inevitability” was, of course, not a foregone conclusion, but this allowed Obama to sneak under the radar with little examination of just how unqualified a candidate he is. The D’s are about to pay for this.

Had the D's gone along with removing Clinton, I believed they'd be healed as a party by now and have grown a good crop of candidates. As it is, the D's have been beholden to the Clinton machine, and now the party is floundering because of it.

Mark my words: The D’s are going down hard this year. Both as a party and with regard to McCain, the R’s are still far, far from perfect, and they may not recapture either House, but I won’t be surprised if they do increase their seats. The Kos Kidz, the DUers, and the other libtards will take this hard, and frankly this concerns me a bit.