Campaign 2008From The Trail
NBC/National Journal embed reporters file regular dispatches on their experiences from the trail.

Previously in this series:
• Obama Surrogates Bear Down On Palin (10/20/08)
• McCain Defends, But Amends, Pointed Attacks (10/14/08)
• Obama Keeps Mum On Potential Spending Cuts (10/14/08)

Read The Entire Series

SEATTLE -- On the stump, Joe Biden rarely seems to be guarding his words. His garrulous style reflects the down-to-earth narrative the campaign has promoted, but it also means plenty of gaffes.

This weekend, as the Delaware senator spent most of his time on the West Coast fundraising circuit, he offered even more candid talk about the election just two weeks out, fleshing out his views on race, the tactics of the John McCain camp, and what he sees as potential challenges Barack Obama might face in office.

"Mark my words," Biden told the audience at a San Francisco fundraiser on Saturday. "Within the first six months of this administration, if we win... we're going to face a major international challenge. Because they're going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They're going to want to test him. And they're going to find out this guy's got steel in his spine."

Republicans pounced on a similar comment made the next night in Seattle as an off-script moment that points out the risks inherent in Obama's inexperience. Democrats disagreed, of course. "Joe Biden tells it like it is, doesn't he?" Obama spokesman Bill Burton said during an appearance on MSNBC on Monday. "The next president is, in fact, going to be tested." But, he added, Obama has shown in the long campaign that he has the judgment to handle what comes his way.

A similarly blunt assessment generated less attention but fit better with the campaign's recent message. Biden told donors in suburban Oakland not to take anything for granted, even as polls show the Democratic ticket ahead.

"Don't think we're just trying to run up the score here," he said. "We're not even close to running up the score. We're not even close to running up the score. Mark my words, you're going to see these polls drop this week."

Biden cited polling from this election cycle -- when Obama watched a significant lead in the New Hampshire primary evaporate against Hillary Rodham Clinton -- and from 2000 and 2004, when, he said, Al Gore and John Kerry showed strength weeks before Election Day, only to lose.

"We're ahead in Virginia, but the idea that we'd have a lead like they're saying we have -- we haven't won that state in over 40 years," he said. "We're leading in that state with an African-American of incredible capacity. We're leading in North Carolina.

"But you also saw how we were ahead in Tennessee with a brilliant young senator last time out who was an African-American," he added, referring to Harold Ford's Senate loss in 2006.

Biden this weekend made his first explicit reference to the so-called "Bradley effect," an invocation of race that he had previously avoided on the stump. Later that night, he also said that as he travels more rural areas of battleground states, he is finding some reluctance among undecided voters to support Obama because of race.

"Those undecided people are having a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African-American president in the history of the United States of America," he said.

Still, he said, he's hopeful for a win, partly because the field organization these donors' dollars are subsidizing is the "ultimate equalizer."

"That's our secret weapon," he said. "This is the most incredible field organization in the history of American politics. It takes a lot of money to feed that beast."

Although fundraisers are not closed to the press, access is typically limited to one national print reporter, one local print reporter and reporters from wire services. Television cameras are only rarely permitted, usually at the behest of event organizers. Campaigns are reluctant to allow candidates' more unguarded moments to be captured on tape.

Even Biden acknowledged he might say more to donors than he will to voters. At another fundraiser on Sunday in Seattle, he said: "I probably shouldn't have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here."