Best. Biden Gaffe. Ever.

Joe Biden at a campaign rally today, “There’s never been a day in the last four years I’ve been proud to be his vice president.”

Obviously, he meant to say “haven’t” in there somewhere, but, admit it, you laughed just a little bit, right?

FILED UNDER: 2012 Election, US Politics, ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. ernieyeball says:

    Well maybe.
    I’ve listened to the clip several times through my Everything’s A $1 Store earphones and it sounds like your transcription is in error. Instead of “I’ve” I am hearing “I’vent” which I take to be a contraction of “I have not”.
    But it could just be my sorry ole’ ears!

  2. @ernieyeball:

    I don’t hear it myself, but to each his own I suppose.

    Although, I’vent isn’t really a word.

  3. Tony W says:

    @Doug Mataconis: Which, I think, rules out it being the “best gaffe ever” – Mr. Biden has given us way better stuff, and will continue to do so for the next four years too I imagine!

  4. Tillman says:

    Comedy. Gold.

    No, he’s saying what Doug thinks he’s saying. And that’s hilarious.

  5. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    This is a good one, but I’m gonna stick with this one for Best Ever:

    “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

  6. Tsar Nicholas says:

    Meh. This is just a slip of the tongue. I have mild dyslexia. I’ve said worse bass-ackwards things, in trials and at oral arguments, no less.

    To me the greatest Biden gaffe, hmm, well, there have been many. The “put y’all back in chains” thing was amazing. You couldn’t have scripted that one for a conservative parody of a SNL-style satire. The “middle class crushed” thing was layers of irony on top of unintentional truth.

    For my money, though, I would go with that de facto approval of China’s one child policy. That had everything. Given that Catholics make up such large percentages of so many swing states it was a major and obvious political gaffe. But it was much more than that. It touched upon DSM-specified projection and transference. It touched upon statism as policy and the ties of the present version of the Democrat Party to statism. It really was a looking glass through which one could get inside the mind of a partisan liberal hack and machine Democrat politico. Not a pretty picture.

  7. princetrumpet says:

    What he does is he slurs “I ain’t”. Good old, down home, Joe. Man, I’m gonna miss this guy.

  8. Just Me says:

    This is funny-I don’t think anyone thinks he meant the words he actually said, but its still funny.

  9. C. Clavin says:

    C’mon…Jan, Jenos, Florack, et al will be quoting this for years.

  10. Jed says:

    One heartbeat away. Let us all wish good health to President Obama.

  11. Peacewood says:

    Definitely, positively the “big stick” remark.

    Nothing else comes close.

  12. C. Clavin says:

    Jed…
    You clearly haven’t been paying attention…Biden has been a hugely valuable VP.
    Do some research.
    Low information voters are dangerous.

  13. Boyd says:

    Maybe it’s my long Navy history of transcribing recorded speech, but I can surely hear his mumbled negative “I havmbin.”

    Joe gives us lots of treats. This clearly isn’t one of them. With all that low-hanging fruit, why pick one where you’re flat-out wrong about what he said?

  14. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    On retrospect, I’d have to say my favorite Biden gaffe was when he forgot that he wasn’t the descendant of Welsh coal miners.

    But that’s just for this moment. My “favorite Biden gaffe” is as subject to change as Biden’s reality.

    Whoops, the moment passed. Now my favorite is the time he mocked Chief Justice Roberts’ flubbing of the Oath of Office, and Obama had to tell him to knock it off.

    Darn, that moment went past quickly. Now it’s his outreach to the Indian-American community:

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

    I better end this comment before I get struck with a new favorite Bidenism…

    Crap, almost made it.

    “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.”

    Joe Biden, putting FDR in the White House three years early and making TVs more than an experimental toy almost a decade before it started to take off.

    Stop me before I Biden again…

  15. Tillman says:

    @Tsar Nicholas:

    The “put y’all back in chains” thing was amazing.

    I was gonna bring that up as my favorite.

  16. creeper says:

    @ernieyeball: If he’s slurring his speech that badly one can’t help but wonder about his sobriety.

  17. ernieyeball says:

    @creeper: That is a serious charge. I would hope you have good, verifiable evidence to back it up.

  18. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @ernieyeball: That IS a serious charge, and totally unfounded.

    If Joe Biden was drunk, the odds are he’d actually be MORE coherent. This is entirely typical of Joey Plugs — he’s like this, naturally, all the time.

  19. Jed says:

    You clearly haven’t been paying attention…Biden has been a hugely valuable VP.

    Oh, indeed. Not so much for his president and party though. Grinning serial mendicants are not what I’d choose to put in leadership positions. I am a big fan of his forcing of the presidential hand on gay marriage, but for the most part he is an embarrassment. I’ve met the guy, several times in fact, and he strikes me as a very C3 intellect. Nice enough fellow but not honest or worth much.

    Low information voters are dangerous.

    True enough, but I’m not trying to stop you from voting. I daresay you think you are very clever and tremendously modern, but thinking that doesn’t make it true. You come across as tedious as your namesake. Odds are pretty good that you’ve not worked in the areas I have, or received the briefings that I get yet you seem comfortable implying that I’m a low information voter. That is, of course, your prerogative, no matter how inaccurate it may be. Sadly, you reveal more of yourself in your projection of what I am than you might have meant to, but ofttimes that is what happens

    Spent too much time responding to your foolishness, but ask yourself if President Biden sounds like an astonishingly good idea to you. Once again, no matter what the results of this Tuesday are, it’s never a bad idea to wish good health and good fortune to President Obama.