Biden, Obama and Kerri...What I Have to Say

In response to my friend's Biden blog:

I haven't said the pledge in like 4 or 5 years. But, I disagree on Obama. I think that Biden is obviously smart, and would've been a great choice, but just because Obama's track record doesn't stand up the same way isn't an instant disqualification. The fervor surrounding Obama has been in a large part based on grassroots excitement involving people who have (like myself) been disillusioned with politics as long as we can sanely remember. I think this is not too unlike JFK, who was a young upstart with problems a-plenty, but worked through that whole "Cuban Missile Crisis" thing so well that Kevin Costner decided it was worth his extreme acting abilities to immortalize it in B&W (okay so maybe the Costner argument isn't the most fool-proof).
I don't think that I'm being naive here. I listened to his DNC speech a few years ago. I listened to his speech at the Sojourners conference (which is one of the best speeches I've ever heard, by the way), and yet I don't think that everything he's saying now is exactly the same as it was then. But, then again, I think that's the very nature of American politics: eventually you have to talk like you're campaigning so that people know that, well, you're campaigning. He has been consistent on his campaign finance stances. He's connected well at the local level (my friend in Iowa said that Obama was the only visible political presence in his hometown -- Clinton had an office outside of the town) and he had been there personally like three times. He was against the war in Iraq from the beginning and still has a nuanced plan to work through the cluster-fuck it has become. His stance on health-care is as leading as any candidate (unless you want Kucinich's wack-job stances). All in all, I would say that Obama and Biden were the two closest candidates to each other.
And, if one of the detractors regarding Obama is that he sounds too much like Dr. King, then I guess I just have different ideas of what detracts. I personally think that all the presidents I've listened to over my brief 27 years (for one more month), listened far too little, and quoted that much less of what people like Dr. King have had to say.
So, I think that Obama is not only the best candidate by far, now that Biden is out of the race, but the most logical one for a supporter of Biden to move towards. And if Obama could actually talk Biden into running as V.P. I think that would be the strongest running ticket in decades.