Joe Biden is Jerry Brown without the weed.

I'm talking about physical and especially vocal presentation and about habits of thought, not about specific issues or experience.

Obama said he wanted someone who could and would stand up to him intellectually, and I think that's what he got. Biden doesn't have Brown's sometimes uncanny recognition of the underlying issues behind the surface issues, but he does have a very good mental map of how a myriad of issues all interconnect. Like Brown, he's sometimes dead wrong, but always for interesting reasons. And he's very good at explaining what he thinks.

And even on issues, their liberal Catholic backgrounds give them many similarities.