Let us parse this.

BREAKING: White House spokesman says Obama's choice of Biden as VP indicates president's view of Biden's capability for presidency.

— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) August 24, 2015

“White House spokesman says Obama’s choice of Biden as VP indicates president’s view of Biden’s capability for presidency.” This, indeed, could be read as “The White House feels that Joe Biden would make a suitable President.” I will even concede that the White House probably would like people to read it as such. However, you could just as easily read it as “The White House admits that it picked Joe Biden for Veep as insurance against somebody shoving Barack Obama out into traffic.”

Seriously, you have to admit: it’s a valid parsing of the sentence. Albeit a highly obnoxious one.  Welcome to politics: here’s your accordion.

But does it mean that Joe Biden is running? …I really do think so, at this point. Hillary Clinton’s numbers are problematical for the Democrats and Bernie Sanders would end up being even worse. If you’re a Democrat with any affection for your party – and we should always remember that there are quite a few people who honestly do like the Democratic party, bizarre as that may sound – you can’t be enjoying the current situation.  Joe Biden would be at least different.

Now this is the point where we hear the You ignore Joe Biden at your peril, which is sensible enough advice in the abstract – but doesn’t really take into account Joe Biden’s actual electoral history. Barack Obama could have picked Bozo the Clo… OK, too easy to make a cheap shot. Barack Obama could have picked a ham sandw… right. Barack Obama could have picked anybody for his running mate in 2008 and 2012 and still won the elections, and by the same margins. On his own, Joe Biden is excellent at suborbital campaigns: which is to say, they go up. And then they come right back down again.

And as to whether Joe Biden’s going to run as Barack Obama’s third term… I don’t know: can we make sure that he’s going to do that? Is that something that we can lock in, ahead of time? – Because we here in the VRWC would make sure anyway that Joe Biden got saddled with Barack Obama.  Oh, yes, we’d look forward to that. Heck, that was going to be the plan with Hillary Clinton, and she was just Obama’s Secretary of State. A Vice President would be even better.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Notice how the White House declined to say “Joe Biden would make a good President?” Yeah. Apparently they’re not quite dead to shame yet, after all. Who would have thought it?