Joe the Talker: Can Biden be good until Election Day?

Many GOP-ers say "let Sarah be Sarah" — but that's not what the Dems have to say about their gaffe-prone VP nominee.
politico

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In some Republican circles, the battle cry for the campaign’s final week is: “Let Sarah be Sarah!”

On the leading but nail-biting Democratic side, there is a very different mantra: “Don’t let Biden be Biden (at least until after Election Day).”

....But Joe Biden is always Joe Biden — a complicated, inexplicable condition long studied and analyzed in Wilmington, Del., and on Capitol Hill but that the rest of the nation (and a new squad of Obama-Biden aides) is only now coming to realize brings new levels of complexity and danger to the political game.

For starters, the state of being Joe Biden means odd things can come out of one’s mouth — sometimes harmlessly, even endearingly, but sometimes with real consequences, as when Biden famously declared that it will “not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”

...But some of Wade’s colleagues on the Obama-Biden staff acknowledge privately that Biden’s comment sent shudders through the campaign — and that was before the verbal miscue vaulted Biden into a new and alarming status as a punch line for late-night comics.

The level of concern in Obamaland was evidenced by the presidential nominee himself saying publicly, in response, that “Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes.” Ouch.

There is clearly an effort to keep Biden out of trouble until after next Tuesday.