Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President of the United States (as observed by National Review):

Vice President Joe Biden has made a long career out of saying crude and stupid things, and now he has outdone himself by affecting a southern accent and telling a substantially black audience in Virginia (he seemed to think he was in North Carolina) that if Romney has his way “he gonna put y’all back in chains.”

The Obama campaign already has established its reputation as a lowlife operation, trafficking in risibly and plainly untrue statements — Mitt Romney killed my wife! — but the latest from Biden is so grotesque and morally illiterate that it deserves a special mention. It bears noting, first, that Mr. Biden spent his Senate years comfortable in the company of a Democratic lion who had borne the title “Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan” and who used the term “white n****r” on national television, and, second, that Mr. Biden represented a highly segregated state. His party has undermined the economic and educational interests of African-Americans at every turn, among other ways by fighting the D.C. scholarship program that benefits the children served by Washington’s failed public schools.

This is the sort of thing that we’re accustomed to hearing from Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan. To hear it from the vice president of the United States is something else altogether. Romney was right to hit back hard at the Obama campaign in the wake of these outrageous remarks, but, given the administration’s lack of a policy success story to tell, such outrages are likely to come thick and deep, and Romney will have to rise above them.

Mitt Romney has an impeccable record on civil-rights issues, having learned at the knee of his father, a Republican who campaigned on civil rights in the 1960s. To suggest as Biden did that Romney’s program has something — anything — in common with slave-trading is vile even by the standards of Democratic campaign rhetoric. That no Democrat of note has spoken up against it is a testament to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the party and the political movement it represents. …

An honorable president would dismiss Biden. Barack Obama probably will buy him a beer.

If Biden were a Republican, and Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, Biden would have been impeached by today. The fact that this embarrassment will continue as vice president after Nov. 6 tells you everything you need to know about Obama and the Democratic Party.

Biden is number two in the federal government. The Democratic Party’s traditional symbol is a jackass. Biden matches the perfect metaphor and the perfect symbol.

Anyone who votes for Biden’s boss Nov. 6 fully deserves what will happen next.