Revoltin' Joe

Hugh Hewitt calls him Slow Joe Biden. Once of his callers suggested Clueless Joe (a play on Shoeless Joe Jackson).

I've never really thought much about him before. He just seemed like a bore. But I never really came to have real contempt for him until I listened to his "questioning" of John Roberts. His faux friendliness ("How ya doin', Judge?") is common enough among pols, but in this case it reminds me a lot of Bob Dylan's Positively Fourth Street:

You say, how are you? good luck
But you don’t mean it . . .

When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it

What really annoys me is that he's such a poseur. His pathetic efforts to persuade Roberts into answering how he would rule on issues that would come before the court weren't just dumb; they were dishonest. His whining and wheedling and silly legal arguments just seemed to proved how really poor the reasoning for the expansionist reading of the Constitution is. Here' a senator arguing that the court should diminish the role of his office in governing the nation. Does he really think so little of democracy that he would prefer to allow judges to decide policy than to trust the political process?