Get past thinking Good Ol' Joe will be VP, Secretary of State, or anything else, because he has stated in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that it is either the Presidency or back to the Senate. If today's assassination in Pakistan doesn't begin to wake some people up to the folly of electing one-term celebrities as presidents then the idiots get what they deserve!

As to Hillary, she copies everything Joe Biden does and says:

1 - 35 years experience - never mind she was having tea with the leader's wives in Europe while Ol' Joe was confronting Milasevic face to face.

2 - Even worse, she gets Wesley Clark to shill for her, as if she had anything to do with sending troops over to stop that genocide in Bosnia. It took 2 years after Ol' Joe confronted Milosevic for him to get Bill off of his dead butt to take any action.

3 - After Joe raised the specter of Pakistan the first time, and the first assassination attempt on Bhutto, then Hillary glommed on to that as her answer to Katie Caouic's question of "What do you consider to be the most dangerous country?" Even though Hillary had voted to declare the Iranian revolutionary guard a terrorist organization.

4 - In the Des Moines Register debate she said that we should have an energy program named after something like the Apollo space program to capture people's imagination. Joe had already named his energy program "Apollo"

5 - Now she is copying the style of Joe's TV campaign ads in Iowa.

Why have an imitation when you can go to the source and vote for Joe? And remember, he has NEVER (as in never in 35 years) been beholden to special interest groups or corporations, unlike most everybody else.

... though I agree wholeheartedly with your dream team

You're dead on. We need not a President who cares thing one for the US.

... unless they have also served as vice presidents, nor to northern (or northern-identified candidates), especially in recent times. Nixon and Kennedy were exceptions to this rule, and neither - to put it mildly - came to a good end.

Governors (especially southern or southern-identified ones), by the supposed virtue of their management abilities have been consistently preferred, and bring to the table their own existing political machines: think Karen Hughes and Turd Blossom and shudder.

Aside from the depression into which our economy is careening, there is only one great issue at stake in this election, as regards the future of the US as a political entity: the restoration and renewal of the Constitution.

Given our experiences over the past 50 years (Hoover, McCarthy , perpetual warfare, internecine political warfare, impeachments, and a declining standard of living and upward mobility) it should be clear to all of us that our constitutional system is no longer working, and has not been for some time.

We have, of course, all been raised (with our little hands on hearts) to believe that the Constitution is sacrosanct, and will last for all time, but the mere fact that the Electoral College (or the Supreme Court) determines the result of presidential elections rather than voters makes our political system one of the most retrograde in the western world.

No senator will take this on, but until someone does, and proposes a constitutional convention, we are stuck in our rut.

Joe Biden is setting himself up to be a great VP choice for Barack Obama. It's a serious legislator balancing a charismatic young Senator--it almost sounds like LBJ joining JFK.

On the GOP side, the Republicans might make a serious Senator their first choice, with the consolation prize going to the evangelicals.

The difference between Dems and GOP this year is telling. Most Dems could be happy with Obama, Clinton, or Edwards and whoever wins is not going to have much trouble bringing the party together.

On the GOP side, however, they don't seem to like their candidates near as well. That usually means a compromise candidate. Only Giuliani or McCain has a snowball's chance of appealing to independents or conservative Democrats, and McCain is the least offensive, most serious contender.

Rembember where you heard it first...

"If we end up with another disaster in the White House, the American People need to look in the mirror."

Uh, no, the American People should fix the media. This train wreck on the Democratic side is all the fault of media types like Chris Matthews who have pushed the "a woman, a black, and the pretty boy from 2004" meme since election night 2006. Go back and check.

I don't have access to Lexis/Nexis but my guess is that the coverage of the "top 3" Democratic candidates has been wildly unequal compared to the three most qualified Democratic candidates based upon experience and positions held. Coverage instead has been based on what National Enquirer and OK magazine readers want, not substance or equal coverage.

If the media had done their job, all candidates from all parties would have been covered equally. As a result, polls and funding would have been more or less equally distributed. Instead, the media has effectively eliminated the three most qualified Democratic candidates by ignoring them. Before a single vote has been cast. If journalists and editors had a conscience, blatant unequal coverage before voting happened should have given them pause. It didn't.

At the same time, the 1960s era debate format fell apart this year. We need 2 hour debates focussed on one topic moderated by experts in that topic who represent 3-4 different views of the topic. That's the only way to force candidates to know their stuff, to articulate their positions, to peel back all the hoo ha and out the phonies. Instead, we got the old shallow round robin debates with preening journalists.

The American People are only at fault for allowing the Fairness Doctrine and other sensible regulations to be gutted or eliminated in the 1980s at the start of this Reagan era. But media regulation is an arcane issue. And I doubt most people realize that, once upon a time, media outlets were accountable to the people in the form of Congress and the FCC. The Republicans packed the FCC and the Democratic Congress traded campaign contributions for gutting media regulation.

Whoever is President next year will most likely be a disaster for the Constitution, for the economy, and for foreign policy. Certainly it will not be the candidate with the most experience. The media has seen to that. We will, instead, get Shrub II.