Biden at Manhattan fundraiser for Bishop

The 2010 midterm congressional elections are more important than the 2008 vote that swept President Barack Obama into office, Vice President Joe Biden told a Manhattan fundraiser for Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) Tuesday.

Without mentioning Bishop's GOP opponent, businessman Randy Altschuler of St. James, by name, Biden said handing Republicans control of either house of Congress would lead to two years of political stalemate and economic trauma.

Next week's election, Biden told the 70 people who paid at least $1,000 to hear his remarks at the Helmsley Park Lane hotel on Central Park South, "is more important than the one that got Barack and me elected, it literally is. Because there, at least, we would have continued to drift another four years, which would be bad. Now at least we've stopped the drift and are starting to head in the right direction."

"If we lose in the House or the Senate, we're now in a position where we are in a stalemate and this thing is just going to go in reverse and our most powerful weapon will be a veto pen, and that's bad."

Still, Biden predicted Democrats would "keep the Senate and win the House," a prognostication rebutted earlier in the day by Altschuler and former Gov. George Pataki.

"I'm not surprised Vice President Biden is coming in to campaign for the congressman," Pataki said. "He has been a reliable rubber-stamp vote for the Pelosi-Reid Congress."

Altschuler, who has largely self-funded his campaign, said "all signs" show a neck-and-neck race.

Biden touted the Obama administration's stewardship of the economy, saving the nation, he said, from an even worse financial catastrophe. "We've done a lot in the last 20 months," he said. "The economy has grown four quarters in a row, not what it needs to, but it's growing, it's not shrinking."

Biden, who stood next to Bishop and grasped the four-term Democrat's shoulder at several points, discussed the nation's need to compete with education and infrastructure investments made by nations such as China and India, and Republican opposition to such spending.

"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive," he said, citing the Transcontinental Railroad and the Internet.

Bishop touted Biden as "an adopted son of Southampton" who spent time this summer at a home to which Bishop, as a teenager, delivered groceries. Biden replied: "When I die, I want to be reborn in Southampton."