Joe Biden Serves A Useful Purpose--As Obama's Olmert

Remember when Ehud Olmert was Deputy Prime Minister, what people thought about his pronouncements about the Disengagement?

Olmert's statements are often coordinated with Sharon to "test the waters" of potential future Israeli government initiatives. Olmert was the first to go public with Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Some Israeli politicians and American Jewish leaders are worried Sharon plans to later evacuate other settlements, and possibly parts of Jerusalem, and that he is using Olmert's statements to gauge the domestic and international response to such possibilities.

Could it be that some of Joe Biden's gaffes on the campaign trail are serving a similar purpose? The New York Post seems to think so:

Is Joe Biden the foot-in-mouth candidate - or is he the Obama campaign's designated teller of inconvenient truths?

First, the Democratic veep hopeful declared that America's enemies will generate "an international crisis, to test the mettle of" a President Obama.

Scary - but likely true.

And yesterday Biden let slip that he and Obama apparently have a sliding scale to determine who's "super-rich."

Obama, after all, has been promising a tax cut for the "middle class" - those making $200,000 a year or less.

Biden yesterday lowered that bar.

"What we're saying," he told a Pennsylvania TV interviewer, "is that [our] tax break doesn't need to go to people making . . . $1.4 million. It should go to [people] making under $150,000 a year."

Oops. That's a 25 percent downward redefinition of "middle class."

An Obama mouthpiece quickly dismissed the discrepancy as just another one of Joe the Senator's gaffes.

But consider: The campaign has a new TV commercial out declaring that families - not individuals - earning $200,000 or less would qualify for a tax cut. Two incomes - not one.

And, as most middle-class wage-earners know, that's a huge difference.

Of course, Israelis had more reason then to take Olmert seriously than Americans now have to pay close attention to Biden--but the comparison is there. Still, I doubt that SNL had that similarity in mind in their sketch last week where they had Biden floating the idea of a Disengagement of his own:

"Mark my words. If you take away nothing else from what I say here today, or indeed, in this entire campaign, remember this. If Barack Obama is elected, we will have a crisis. And when this crisis hits, and it will, in the second week of February, we may do some weird things. We may cede Florida back to Spain, or Alaska to the Russians.

All in jest, after all.

After all, Obama would take 'redistribution' only so far...right?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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