In the light of the was she? wasn't she? vetting questions, Ambinder makes a salient point:
Is it possible, in an era when hundreds of thousands of documents are available, when, on the day of the announcement, 10,000 eager opposition researchers will pool their resources together, when the resources of a political campaign are finite, to actually pull off a political vet?
I think the Republican campaign is providing a pretty resolute 'no' response to that question.
The Democrats aren't missing the chance to point out that they did it right.
But, still, how hard can it have been? Biden has been in the senate for thirty five years. Senior Democrats don't need to wonder what he was getting up to a couple of years ago. They were having brunch with him a couple of years ago. Of course, being a known quantity doesn't mean you're whiter-than-white (as John Edwards and his extra-marital affair showed us) but at least it means that the rumours, gossip and whiffs of scandal are already old news to the people who need to build a strategy to get you elected. They're not going to come galloping out of the Alaskan wilderness to take you by surprise.
In this 'change' election, being an old hand Washington insider isn't the most fashionable thing to be, but sometimes it has its advantages...
• posted by Claudia Jean
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