Creepy Joe Biden a longtime boon to reporters

Creepy Joe Biden is finally getting into the presidential race tomorrow – thank goodness.

I was worried for a while there yesterday, when he suddenly cancelled his plans to announce today in Virginia. Cold feet, perhaps? Sometimes you can develop a few circulation problems when you’re 76 years old, which Creepy Joe is.

If he’d dropped out, I had my lede all ready to go:

“Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

But he’s in, and this is a big bleepin’ deal, as he would say. I mean, he was the vice president for Barack Obama, or as Joe called him, “Barack America.”

He’s Barack America’s guy. As Biden described him in 2008, “You got the first sort of mainstream, African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

As opposed to who, Creepy Joe. Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton?

What a relief to have him in the fight — now I can again use all of Joe Biden’s Greatest Hits. I’m sure we can count on the kind of soaring rhetoric he has built his extinguished career on:

“As Barack says, a three-letter word. Jobs. J-O-B-S.”

Or, “To heed the timeless advice of Teddy Roosevelt, now is the time to speak softly and carry a big stick. End of quote. I promise you, the president has a big stick.”

Biden is fascinated by both Roosevelts, even if his historical knowledge is a bit hazy. As he once recalled of the beginning of the Great Depression (during Herbert Hoover’s presidency): “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on TV….”

Biden’s always seemed like one of those guys who would peak in the polls the day he announced – think Jeb Bush. But actually, even before the official release of his announcement video tomorrow, he already seems to be fading, falling behind Uncle Bernie Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire with Mayor Pete closing in fast….

It’s early, but whenever Joe Biden runs for president, it gets late, early.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Creepy Joe. He got me my first real national exposure back in 1987 when his campaign was derailed by an oppo-research dump – he was caught red handed lifting the campaign stump speech of a British Labour Party politician from a coal-mining family in Wales.

That was Creepy Joe – basically claiming to be a Welsh coal miner.

I wrote a column saying we could probably never prove who put the rocket in Biden’s pocket, but that my money was on the governor of Massachusetts, Pee Wee Dukakis, and his crew of dirty tricksters. That morning, Dukakis fired his campaign manager – John Sasso.

I only mention this to show you how long Joe Biden has been running for president. He was done in by a VHS tape that was entrusted to a coat holder named Jack the Hack who flew to Des Moines and then put the tape in a snail-mailbox for a… newspaper columnist. How old-school is all of that?

The only surprise is that Sasso didn’t use the Pony Express to get the VHS tape to Iowa.

I looked up the other Democrats Biden was running against in 1988. At least three of them are dead – Paul Simon, James Traficant and Lyndon LaRouche. Another candidate was Gary Hart, who was knocked out by photographs of himself with a party girl on his lap on a boat called the Monkey Business.

Those pictures appeared on the front page of the National Enquirer, which at the time had a circulation of 4.7 million copies a week. When it was sold last week, the Enquirer’s circulation was reported to be 215,000.

Again, I’m just pointing out how long Biden’s been around.

He was first elected to the Senate in 1972 – when Bernie Sanders was an unemployed hippie, writing his fantasies for that weekly in Vermont about how women fantasize about being raped by three men at once.

Despite his advanced age, Biden tries to say au courant. He understands the demographic changes in the US:

“In Delaware, you cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

No you’re not, Mr. Vice President. We can’t wait for you to get into the fight – and we’re not joking either.

I just hope you begin your speech with another one of your greatest hits:

“As they say in my business, I’m gonna give you the whole load today.”

Break a leg, Creepy Joe!