shelbinator.com

I just got back from listening to Hillary Clinton accept the endorsement of Congressman John Lewis and deliver a bunch of canned, fluffy Let’s Turn This Country Around rhetoric that left her devoted following weak in the knees.

Bla, bla, bla.

Almost a thousand miles away, at almost the exact same time, a political event that hints at what it’ll really take to turn this country around was going down in Iowa. I’d like to see Hillary pull off something like this:

The Oscar and Felix of politics? Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, would be strong contenders for “The Political Odd Couple of the Year Award” – if one existed.

On matters of policy, they don’t share that much in common – except what to do about Iraq.

So, the two presidential hopefuls will meet up in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday to talk about their plan to bring stability to the war torn nation. Specifically, the two senators will discuss their legislation that calls for decentralizing Iraq’s federal government and giving more control to local and regional groups. Their amendment passed easily in the Senate last week.

“Partisan politics must not come in the way of finding a solution to the war in Iraq,” Biden said in a statement. “The overwhelming majority of Americans want us to get our troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible without leaving chaos behind.”

Over on an Iowa blog, a John Edwards supporter looks at this kind of event and gets angry:

But this really annoys me. Aside from the fact that I think any partition plan is doomed to fail, Biden is throwing Senate Republicans a life raft. Now they can credibly say that they have voted for a solution to the Iraq problem.

Talk about the kind of retarded partisan-at-all-costs attitude you expect from some DailyKossacks that have the Right foaming at the mouth to accuse us yet again of being national security nincompoops! Yes, let’s not try to change course in Iraq because it’s better partisan politics to keep Republicans over the barrel! Great idea, demoinesdem!

To know me is to know that many Republican politicians make me want to eat glass, but come on: getting this country out of Iraq safely — and getting a better health coverage system, and ameliorating the Iran situation, and shifting our national energy portfolio away from the destruction of the planet — is going to take just this kind of bipartisanship, like it or lump it.

Today, Hillary Clinton had John Lewis by her side.

Well yeah, that was the easy part.