Speaking at a memorial service in Tennessee for the Marines and Sailor killed by a Muslim immigrant born in Kuwait, Vice President Biden staked out ground nobody else in the Obama administration has gone near. He called the perp, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a “jihadist,”  - specifically a “perverted Jihadist.”

The Right Scoop quotes him:

“These perverse ideologues. Warped theocrats. They may be able to inspire a single lone wolf to commit a savage act, but they can never, never threaten who we are. When this perverted jihadist struck, everyone responded.”

Watch it here:

This looks to me as if Biden is preparing to run for president to the right of Hillary Clinton on national defense, as someone who will speak plainly on radical Islam. He may recognize that with her intimate ties to Huma Abedin, whose ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are deep and who had access to national security secrets on Hillary’s email server (and who may become Hillary’s fall-guy for stripping “top secret” labels off material – as if that really made any difference), Hillary is vulnerable. In fact, Biden could turn his propensity for gaffes into a “straight talk” appeal, which might hope to tap into the same vein Donald Trump is thriving on.

I have tended to regard Biden as more of a joke than perhaps I should have. It looks to me as though he is being quite crafty in his approach to a possible run. He’s probably waiting for reaction to these comments.