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On foreign policy, Biden was among the Democratic centrists when he was in the Senate. On the Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry, Boxer and Feingold were almost always the leftmost contingent - sometimes joined by Dodd. In 2006, Obama often backed the Kerry, Boxer, Feingold group. Judging just from that, I would have thought Biden more likely a liberal hawk. (Especially after a 2005 CFR speech where he praised the ideas of Bush's second inaugural address. Spreading democracy was the neo-con idea.)
Now, Biden and Obama, explicitly reject the idea of "spreading democracy" as a goal in Afghanistan, while HRC sometimes still goes that far - than backtracks. (a recent example was in speaking on Afghanistan where the backtrack was saying that it could happen.) This is significant as it is a big move to reject the American views that what we have is the only right thing and that we are "good at fixing things." In addition, one shift in foreign policy where the verdict is not yet in, is shown in the Kerry/Lugar/Berman bill that greatly expanded civilian aid to Pakistan. This effort had its start in conversations between Kerry, Biden and Hagel after an eventful trip where they both went to see US efforts to aid earthquake victims in Pakistan and on their Afghan oversight mission ended up with a forced landing due to snow in the mountains. All three backed this approach - and, while I have my personal guess which one led in proposing this - as he was on record years before for such a policy, there is no way to know. More importantly, Biden agreed and it was the SFRC back it as the Biden/Lugar bill.
On domestic issues, Biden was never one of the most liberal Senators - he was not a Kennedy or Leahy - and he sponsored the awful bankruptcy bills. I do know that Delaware is where many of the big credit care companies operate out of. That did NOT mean that he had to give the credit cards all that they wanted rejecting every limitation Kennedy wanted to the bill. He could have acted as the fulcrum between Ted Kennedy and the combination of the industries and the Republicans to moderate it. He was an entrenched political figure, who, at that time, was Senator for life, if he wanted it. Had he done that, I would argue that he had shown skills that boded well for negotiating the Democratic domestic agenda.
This is not to say that there is not a lot of good on the domestic issues. His name is on the bill against violence to women and he was one of the few Senators that kept at least one foot in the middle class ethnic part of the Democratic party. He very eagerly backed Kerry's high speed rail proposal - likely helping assure parts of it ending up in the stimulus bill. On global warming, one different pillar supporting the need to do it was the national security need to do so - Biden, at Kerry's request, held the first hearing on that in 2007 when we regained the leadership. Unlike 2000 or 2004, none of the 2008 candidates were people with any long term record supporting this effort, but Biden and Dodd were stronger than any of the 3 main candidates - who mostly echoed words from 2004, because it was political to do so.
It is hard to know the economic team that Biden would have picked. There would have been pressure on him by the party to pick the Democratic "experts" - and most of the people who had done the job and were young enough to want to do it again were the Clinton people. Just looking at Biden's choices of committees, he never was on Banking, Finance, or Commerce. Now, Senators can be on only a limited number of committees, but it is clear these were not the areas where he had concentrated. This might mean that he would be more likely to take advise from the party. The counter is that his economic adviser is to the left of all the Geitner, Summers group.
But, this is all pretty irrelevant. In 2008, there was no way that Biden came close to getting any lift. Even though the Washington Post and someone in TIME who loved him, the ONLY Democrat I ever heard discuss him when asked about 2008 was John Kerry - who in addition to Obama and Clinton also often mentioned Dodd and Biden in 2007. (He praised all 4, he did not mention Edwards at all) Biden tried running, not just in 1988 and 2008, but he tested the waters in 2004. In 2004, he generated less interest than he did in 2008. The reality is that our choice in 2008 was Clinton or Obama. (I actually think TPTB wanted Clinton/Obama but the Obama people aided by the Kerry/Kennedy wing outmaneuvered them.)
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