After failing twice in his bid for presidency, Joe Biden finally moved closer to the White House on Wednesday night, when he was officially nominated as the vice presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.
However, the next two months leading to the Nov. 4 Election Day will be still a long and tough road for him to the White House as Obama is struggling to win back lead over his Republican presidential rival, John McCain.
The nomination of the 65-year-old Delaware Senator who spent half of his life so far in the Capitol Hill was not a surprise to most Democrats and outsiders. He was considered as the best running mate to compensate for Obama's lack of experience in foreign and national security affairs.
As the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was considered as the best candidate to be Obama's running mate since the 46-year-old Illinois Senator, who is still in his first term in Congress, has an urgent need to compensate for his lack of foreign affairs experience.
Biden joins the Obama's camp at the right moment when the U.S.-Iraq negotiations about the deployment of American troops in the country beyond 2008 is at the key moment, and the U.S. casualties in the Afghanistan war is at all time high, as well as the crisis between Georgia and Russia has not yet leveled off, all that have brought more attention to candidates' foreign policies.
But, what tops Obama's foreign policy credentials is whether he can unite the party under the banner of "change," or to be more specific, win a significant number of the 18 million voters who used to support Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primary but now have not turned to Obama for sake of the party unity.
It is not hard for Obama's supporters to endorse Biden although this choice seems to undercut Obama's vow to replace Washington's old politics with new.
"He is a well-balanced choice to satisfied people's need for change and the experience to make change happen," said Stephenie Moss, an Obamanian from Denver. "He can offer Obama most energy with his many years of experience in foreign policies."
But it was a tough decision for Clinton's supporters to accept. A poll immediately taken after the announcement of Biden's pick showed that about 27 percent of them decided to vote for McCain, compared to only 16 percent two months ago.
Even after Clinton's strongest message delivered in her prime-time speech on Tuesday night, saying Obama, as her candidate, "must be the next president," it is considered not strong enough to dispel some of her supporters' skepticism on Obama.
Acknowledging an unfinished mission to convince white, old and female voters favoring the Democratic Party, Biden has kicked off his journey as the No. 2.
On Wednesday, as the first public appearance during the Convention, he brought his compelling family story of losing his ex-wife and baby daughter to a car accident to a roundtable meeting with working mums that Obama's wife presided.
Sitting among women, Biden sought to appeal the Clinton's base with a new-released plan, titled "Obama-Biden Plan to Support Working Women and Families."
However, to clear the way to the White House, Biden has to manage to convince voters that with his help, the Democrats' policies can jump off the paper and become reality.
In the battle with Republicans, without knowing his counterpart, Biden has gained points by knowing McCain for decades in the Senate.
But this strength is, on the other hand, his Achilles' heel, making him also vulnerable to McCain's potential attacks.
(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2008)
