Axelrod won't rule out Biden being dropped from the ticket

[Beet]

Biden is awesome.

[Beet]

I think voters clearly don't want a 70 year old as VP or President.  

You should ask President Mondale if that's true.

[Beet]

Biden is not Ronald Reagan either.

You're right. I'd take Biden over Reagan any day.

Seriously though, few voters know how old Biden is. He certainly acts alive and vigorous. Yes, four years ago he brought experience and wisdom (particularly foreign policy) to a ticket with a young man who had been criticized on experience, and today that plus is no longer as relevant. But it'd still be a bad idea to drop him from the ticket for the reasons Cobbler said.

Speaking of which, how much foreign policy experience does the Romney-Ryan ticket have? Is Ryan really seasoned enough to step into the shoes of the President? Or is that not even being discussed in this election?

[Beet]

Biden is not Ronald Reagan either.

You're right. I'd take Biden over Reagan any day.

Seriously though, few voters know how old Biden is. He certainly acts alive and vigorous. Yes, four years ago he brought experience and wisdom (particularly foreign policy) to a ticket with a young man who had been criticized on experience, and today that plus is no longer as relevant. But it'd still be a bad idea to drop him from the ticket for the reasons Cobbler said.

Speaking of which, how much foreign policy experience does the Romney-Ryan ticket have? Is Ryan really seasoned enough to step into the shoes of the President? Or is that not even being discussed in this election?

I guess you can say Biden's economy is better than Reagan's economy, not gonna argue with you there, lol. 

People thought John McCain was old, and they'll think Biden is old.  You're not going to stop people from seeing it with their own eyes.  Biden was unusually on message in 2008, but he's gonna say more crazy things, which he is known for, after all he's a clean, articulate guy; and the republicans are going to make a bigger issue out of his senility compared to Romney/Ryan. 

Paul Ryan has 14 years of govt experience.  He's about as experienced as Bill Clinton was in 1992. 
Also, Democrats can't say anything about Ryan's young age and experience, when Obama was nominated with just 3 years of Senate experience.  Obama lowered the bar for everyone else. 

LOL. Biden is 69. The guy at the top of your ticket is 65, only 4 years younger than Biden. Go ahead and and attack Biden over being old. It's not going to work.

The Obama/Biden ticket had foreign policy experience in 2008, thanks to Biden. Romney/Ryan ticket has no foreign policy experience. Romney already showed he can't go on a foreign tour for one week without screwing up. How is Ryan supposed to help that? The next President will have to deal with serious international issues. Only one of the tickets has shown that they can handle international issues. And Ryan has never been elected to statewide office, unlike Clinton or Obama.

[Beet]

Forgot about that. And the 79-80 Recession was based almost entirely around interest rates and inflation. It was actually quite simple. The 2008 Crisis was more of 2 or 3 Recession in one.
1. The Housing Bubble Popped
2. Lehman Brothers Collapsed
3. International Financial Crisis
Those three things made it 26 x worse than 79-80. Beet could explain it better than me.

Actually, no.  Unemployment was about a point lower, but inflation and lack of real growth were the problems.  In terms of the misery index, it was substantially worse.  In 1979-80, you had an oil shock, one brokerage house collapse, gigantic inflation and a the metals market going insane.

The 1980 recession was one of choice. The Federal Reserve deliberately tipped the economy into recession. In light of the inflation rate at the time, I believe it was the correct decision, even though, as I have said, Volcker tried to manipulate the timing for political purposes. Meanwhile, the 'recovery' was an illusion-- it was built on unprecedented and rapidly growing debts-- consumer, banking, and government-- as well as a rise in trade deficits, all of which continued each cycle until 2008.

If things feel better today than they did in 1980, it's because we are 3 years into a steady recovery, whether Republicans want to admit it or not. It'd also have a lot to do with the massive amounts of federal intervention and unprecedented actions the government had to take to stave off full-blown depression. And no, as a Democrat I am not happy about that. Contrary to the accusations of us being all big-government enthusiasts, I would have preferred the government didn't have to intervene in the economy or spend so much money stimulating it. But the empirical evidence could not be more clear. The interventions were inevitable and staved off a complete collapse of the free enterprise system in the US (nothing even remotely close to that was at stake in 1980). Even Paul Ryan knew as much when he begged Congress to pass TARP in 2008. Businesses should be thanking Obama for saving their asses, but that would be too much justice.

[Beet]

Just to nitpick, I said businesses should be thanking Obama for managing the response to the 2008 crisis successfully for them. I know there are a lot of unemployed and other people out there who have good reason to be dissatisfied with Obama, and I don't think it's fair to ask them to thank him. But we'll be making the case that Romney would not make things any better, given that his economic ideas are mostly recycled failed Bush trickle down policies.