Plugs Biden: GOP Shooting, But If They Miss…
Sep 1, 2009 24 Comments ›› Erik Wong
by Mark Silva
Republicans are targeting Democrats in the midterm elections coming up next year, Vice President Joe Biden says, but “if they shoot and miss, this is going to be a changed country – not for two years, but for two decades.”
Biden offered this at a continental-breakfast fundraising reception in Center City Philadelphia today for freshman Rep. John Adler (D-N.J.), who replaced a Republican who served for 34 years. The fate of the Obama administration’s drive to bring “fundamental change,” he said, rests on how Adler and 24 other freshman Democrats in tight districts fare in the 2010 midterms.
“This election is in a sense bigger than the last election,” Biden said.
“If you’re on the other side, what do you want to do?” Biden asked. “You want to make sure these guys your target, you want to make sure that all those guys who won in close districts last year, lose.
“If you do that, it’s the only hope you have if you are the other party of stopping the momentum for the kind of change we ran on and we committed to.” he said, “If they shoot and miss, this is going to be a changed country – not for two years, but for two decades.”
For all their opposition, Biden suggested Republicans “remain in a sort of catatonic state about what they’re going to do” about health care and other initiatives that Obama is pressing. “Have you heard one concrete alternative put forth by the opposition” on health care or energy independence?”
