Saturday, August 01, 2015

Joe Biden has a secret. Joe Biden must not run.

(Readers may want to pass along this post to others.)

I like Joe Biden. He'd make a good president. Most liberal readers of Confront and Conceal will come away with a much better impression of Biden than of Hillary.

But this man must not run for president.

He has a secret which very few people know. Quite by accident, I became one of the few.

The New York Times -- which has used both fair and foul means (often foul) to disrupt Hillary's ambitions -- has published a piece which indicates that Biden is considering a run. Maureen Dowd (whom I despise) followed up with a piece which spewed the usual anti-Clinton spew and then pushed for a Biden candidacy. (I'm sure that many of my readers will recall the things that Bob Somerby has had to say about Dowd.)

In that column, Dowd gives a detailed account of a private dialogue between the dying Beau Biden and his father. William Kristol (a man who is so damned despicable that he makes Dowd look lovable) rightly asks: Who was Dowd's source? Either she made up the whole thing, or a member of the Biden family confided in her.

Put all the clues together, and one message becomes clear: The neocons want Biden to run. At least, the NYT wants Biden to run -- and the NYT has become the journal of "liberal" neoconservatism.

But why? Biden is not a war guy. He's not a "We're an empire now" guy. I cannot believe that neoconservative interests would be better served by Joe Biden than by Hillary Clinton, who counts Robert Kagan among her friends and supporters.

No. The neocons are pushing Joe Biden to run for only one reason: He will be easier to defeat.

This is not your cue to make the usual jokes about Biden's propensity for gaffes. I'm talking about something different. Something you don't know. Something secret.

I've been sitting on this secret since 2008. I found out about it purely by accident from a source I trust. This post may offer a clue. (The post references "a man whose name you would know." That man was Dick Clark; the poor guy was in terrible shape.)

It was an odd feeling, sitting on this information throughout two election cycles, knowing that one well-timed post might have changed history. Despite my antipathy for Obama, I kept quiet.

Why? Because I like Joe Biden. That is to say: He takes the right stances on many issues, and he conveys the impression that he is usually a man of great integrity. Elections should be about policy, not about the personal piffle that seems to fascinate so many Americans.

In 2012, I disclosed the secret to someone who might be considered a Democratic insider. Don't get the wrong impression: I'm a D-level blogger and happy to be such; it's not as though I'm on friendly terms with many, or any, political insiders. Nevertheless, I wrote this particular "party man" a letter which revealed the potential problem, and -- somewhat to my surprise, and perhaps to his regret -- he replied. He said that, even if the truth came out, it probably would not hurt Obama in the election, because the secret did not concern Obama directly.

This blog will not discuss the secret in greater detail, although anyone with half a brain should be able to hazard a reasonable guess. Nobody asked me to write this post. I decided to write it because I have come to suspect that certain neocons already know the secret. That is why they are so desperate for Biden to run.

15 comments:

Eric said...

That's interesting because I have a secret to tell about Joe Cannon.

The secret is so awful, I hesitate to reveal this secret. It is dark and devastating and were it to be revealed to the public, Mr. Cannon could not continue to live in the United States. He would have to move to Venezuela, which does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

No...no, I just can't reveal this secret, that is terrible.

Joseph Cannon said...

Venezuela? Worse than that. I moved to freakin' Baltimore. So speak freely, friend Eric: My situation cannot possibly get worse.

Stephen Morgan said...

I think Cannon should be exiled back to his homeland: Vague-Allusion-istan.

Speak or don't speak, stop this mealy-mouthed nonsense.

And I would still like to know who the farmers were.

Joseph Cannon said...

"Vauge"? Seriously?

Stephen, I can guess how you might have reacted to "The Crucible" if you had seen it back in the day: "C'mon. You guys really think that Miller's play has something to do with Joe McCarthy? Jeez, where'd you get THAT crazy idea?"

Stephen Morgan said...

Look, I don't do implications. I didn't know The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was meant to be racist. I didn't originally understand that George Orwell wasn't unfond of pigs. I'm a prosaic, linear, literal person. Literally, in that I don't like poetry. Just say what you mean and mean what you say without expecting people to read between the lines or read your mind. I know that's a split infinitive.

You might think you're laying your implications on right thick, that doesn't mean anyone else knows what you mean. Spare a thought for those of us who don't flit from one bizarre assumption to the next.

Actually, I do quite like the poetry of The Great MacGonagall. It's just like reading prose, except it rhymes.

Joseph Cannon said...

Stephen, you should consider the possibility that YOU were not the intended primary audience for the post.

Gee. If you think I am being obscure, I wonder what you would make of T.S. Eliot's "Gerontion"?

Go on. Give it a try.

Anonymous said...

Do you really need a secret to disqualify Biden from running against Hillary? He said it himself from his own mouth while he running as vise president that Hillary is the most qualified person to be president. He added she is sure more qualified than me . what else do you need

Stephen Morgan said...

You see, it would have been less obscure to say who is the primary audience. Either way, unless the primary audience is people who already know Joe Biden's secrets, in which case your post regarding them is redundant, then you should have been more explicit in your mentioning of what is Joe Biden's secret. Just say it. I don't think your intended audience is cryptic crossword afficianadoes.

I read the Gerontion. It seems to be about an old man, in that it mentions being about an old man and is called "Gerontion". It contains the phrase "wilderness of mirrors", which I have previously heard. Other than that it seems to be a random assortment of words collectively having no meaning at all. It doesn't even rhyme. That's just lazy.

Joseph Cannon said...

Ah, Stephen. The world is a richer place when we learn to be comfortable with ambiguity. "Gerontion" is one of those poems that appears to be word salad until you've studied it for a few hours. Or maybe days. Years. JJA had fine taste in poetry, and should have remained in that world.

When I get totally bored with politics (and I'm almost there), perhaps I'll turn Cannonfire into a poetry blog.

By the way, I don't know if this particular post will ever reach its INTENDED audience.

Anonymous said...

I like Joe Biden. I like that when he was respectfully buttonholed by the 9/11 activist Jeremy Roth-Kushel he responded respectfully and told Jeremy "You have great hair. If I had hair like you, I would be president right now."

Joseph, your Baltimore sounds a lot like my Chicago. I've suggested that a win-win situation might be that instead of having prisons in the USA, that miscreants should be sentenced to a period of exile in Chicago. Chicago would get a greatly expanded talent pool, prison costs would be cut down to nothing, and once those miscreants served out their sentences they would never, ever break the law again.




Stephen Morgan said...

I have tried reading between the lines. Is the intended audience the Biden people, who you hope will not run if they see that you know whatever it is that you know, and knowing that you know they will stop you from talking by not running?

OTE admin said...

So Biden uses acupuncture? I never knew.

Joseph Cannon said...

Not so far as I know, OTE.

prowlerzee said...

Well, I will post poetry should that come to pass. I have ZERO clue what acupuncture has to do with anything. I do know that Biden's dead son got the gay source off the media airwaves when he was trying to tell how Obama did drugs and gay sex. I always thought that was why Biden got the VP post. Why so cagey with this baffling secret??

Muffin said...

Perhaps the creepy photos of Uncle Joe fondling and crawling all over women 40 years his junior, some of whom are other men's wives, have something to do with his secret. To his credit, they are women, and they are adults; we aren't in the UK.