BIDEN: I tell ya, it’s not so much what I heard at the Republican Convention, when you heard John speak last night or not so much what I heard when I heard the Governor had to say, the vice presidential candidate. It’s what I didn’t hear. The silent. The silence of the Republican Party was deafening. It was deafening on jobs, on health care, on environment, on all things that matter in the neighborhoods that I grew up in. Deafening. Ladies and Gentlemen, their America is not the America I live in. They see something different than I see. Ladies and Gentlemen, literally, those of you, I can’t swear to this because I didn’t see every minute of every speech but I asked my staff to check. Do any of you recall either candidate on the Republican ticket utter the phrase middle class? Did any of you hear them utter the phrase health care or how we’re gonna help?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Rick Davis, John’s campaign manager, said two days ago at the convention, and I heard this, he said this campaign is not about issues. That’s what he said. And everything that I saw at the Convention demonstrated that. It was about how well-placed, and boy how good she is, and how a left jab can be stuck pretty nice. It’s about how Barack Obama is such a bad guy.

It’s about how, in fact, they’ve got great quips and they’re like the kids, you know, when you went to school and you’re very proud of the new belt you had or the new shoes you had. There was always one kid in the class that would say “Oh, are those your brother’s”? Remember that kid? That’s what this reminded me of. “Oh I love your dress. Is that your mother’s”? You know what I’m talking about.

What do you talk about when you have nothing to say? What do you talk about when you cannot explain eight years of failure? What do you talk about? What do you talk about? You talk about the other guy. Look, I don’t have to…You remember what Harry Tru…remember hiM saying “Give em hell, Joe”? I wasn’t around when Harry Truman was around but I remember my grandfather saying “Give em hell, Harry.” He yelled back, “I’m not gonna give em hell. I’m gonna tell ‘em the truth and they’re gonna think it’s hell.”

I got this video from the DNC. Here’s the text of that fundraising letter that accompanied it:

Friend –

The most shocking thing about the Republican convention this week wasn’t what you heard, but what you didn’t hear.

That’s what vice presidential nominee Joe Biden told a crowd in Pennsylvania during a fiery speech on Friday. Joe explained why John McCain, Sarah Palin, and their
Republican surrogates chose to make the convention an issue-free zone and replace a serious conversation with attack after attack.

Joe’s speech is a must-see. Watch his blistering response to the Republicans’ empty attacks and make sure to pass it on to your family and friends.

The platform adopted by the Republican Party this year is the most extreme in recent history. They didn’t talk about it very much, and it’s easy to see why. Here’s what you might have missed:

• A constitutional amendment banning all abortions, regardless of rape, incest, or the mother’s health, and another banning same-sex marriage
• Language restricting embryonic stem cell research and opposing action on
  climate change
• Absolutely nothing about Equal Pay for Equal Work, the destruction of American jobs due to outsourcing, or closing rampant corporate tax loopholes

It’s no surprise that McCain and his party spent so little time talking about the issues, they have no issues to run on.

Republicans are hoping they can avoid talking about their failed policies of the past eight years, and how they have no plans but to bring you just more of the same.

But it’s our job, with Joe Biden on our side, to make sure they don’t get away with it.

Blogger are saying that this proves that “Joe can land a punch”, something that I didn’t doubt for a minute. That isn’t the question, though. It’s whether Obama can take a punch that matters. Thus far, I haven’t seen proof that he can. in fact, he’s been flopping and flailing since his San Fransisco fiasco.

When Gov. Palin took a couple shots at his being a community organizer, he fell into tiny little pieces. Talk about a guy with a glass jaw. It wasn’t one of his finer moments. It came off too much like the one-time neighborhood bully saying to his mother “Mommie, please protect me. That girl is beating me up.” Like I told King and Michael during their show this afternoon, Gov. Palin is the type of wild game that shoots back, to which King said “And rather well from what I’m told.” I would’ve added that Gov. Palin is the type that’d empty the full clip into an animal that’s still moving but they were running tight on time.

Technorati Tags: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, YouTube, DNC, Health Care, Job Creation, Sarah Palin, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. The most telling phrase in his speech was “in the neighborhood I grew up in.”

   He sure doesn’t live in that neighborhood, or one even coming close to resembling it, now. Yet he wants us to believe he’s still “one of us”, that he “feels our pain”.

   Right. I’m sure he can’t even tell you how much it costs to fill his Mercedes (or whatever it is he is chauffered in), and thinks it’s great Pelosi screwed the American public by shutting down the House without allowing an unencumbered vote on drilling. Or that it still costs over $900 to fill a big rig to deliver his designer desks and shoes. (It’s only $900. What would I say if it cost real money like the donks, especially his chosen leader, would love it to.)

   For the little guy my patootie!

   Comment by Carlos — September 6, 2008 @ 9:31 pm

2. You put your finger rtight on it Carlos.

   Sara Palin IS another Harry Truman, with a populist intuition for what the middle class is feeling, and with that rare mentality or conscience for what public office really is: trust. Trust that you’ll do the right thing, and trust that she knows its not about her, or her power, but the people and the power of the people that elected her. Something that is lost, or over the the heads of her counterparts Pelosi, Boxer and Di Fi.

   Comment by T A Gray — September 7, 2008 @ 7:24 am

3. Palin is currently cowering from the meanie press and poopie Democrats and doesn’t want to answer questions because the GOP is afraid she’ll make mistakes. She made one speech and now will prepare for her transformation from governor to vice president.

   When she emerges from her cocoon, she will be an expert on national and international issues.

   Comment by Liem — September 7, 2008 @ 8:32 am

4. Jeeze Liem, you didnt tell us you had an inside track.

   Good job!

   Comment by T A Gray — September 7, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

5. “the GOP is afraid she’ll make mistakes.” Liem

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qotHTtr30I

   Comment by SEW — September 7, 2008 @ 2:27 pm

6. Unlike the donks who are willing to put Biden out there to say any stupid thing he wants to so their spinmeisters can tell us what he really meant. They let him do that because he already knows it all anyway, right?

   Comment by Carlos — September 8, 2008 @ 5:19 am

7. Yeah, he’s quite an ego show all by himself.

   I’ve heard about him from a lady at our church, now retired, that used to work on the Secretary of the Senate’s staff.

   She said, the two most dangerous places to be was between Joe Biden and a camera, and anywhere around him when he found out he missed one.

   Comment by T A Gray — September 8, 2008 @ 7:21 am