There really is no good way to spin this:

Mr. Biden stunned Democrats and elated Republicans by praising Mr. Upton while the lawmaker looked on from the audience. Alluding to Mr. Upton’s support for a landmark medical-research law, Mr. Biden called him a champion in the fight against cancer — and “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with.”

Mr. Biden’s remarks, coming amid a wide-ranging discourse on American politics, quickly appeared in Republican advertising. The local Democratic Party pleaded with Mr. Biden to repair what it saw as a damaging error, to no avail. On Nov. 6, Mr. Upton defeated his Democratic challenger by four and a half percentage points.

That's right, while Barack Obama was busting his ass (and not getting paid for it) to help make the Blue Wave happen, good ol' Joe was earning $200,000 to help get a Republican re-elected. Of course, his people deny this, and try to play it off as some sort of coincidence, but this was a scant three weeks before the election. Both Biden and his staff had to know this was a monumentally bad idea, which makes these rationalizations even more infuriating:

Could this be a template for North Carolina teachers?

Preliminary numbers show that a "vast supermajority" of union members in Los Angeles have voted to approve a deal with the city's school district — ending the six-day teachers strike. The decision means teachers will head back to class on Wednesday.

Some teachers expressed frustration, saying the deal didn't go far enough, while others said they were relieved. "I'm pretty excited," said Jennifer Liebe-Zelazny, a fourth-grade teacher at Alta Loma Elementary School. "Nobody got everything, but everybody got something."

Before you say, "That's one county, not the whole state," LA County has a bigger population (over 10 million) than North Carolina. A more relevant argument against the comparison would be the difference between a genuine union and an association, because a direct action of this magnitude here would have varying consequences depending on where you teach. But when you look at what they achieved in just six days, it might be worth the risk:

CITY COUNCIL WILL HEAR PUBLIC COMMENTS ON WINSTON-SALEM CONFEDERATE STATUE TONIGHT: The city council meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday (Jan. 22), and statue opponents are saying on Facebook that they plan to protest the presence of the statue during the public-comment period of the meeting. Some supporters of the statue said earlier this month that they also wanted to speak at the next meeting of the council. The statue, paid for by donations to the United Daughters of the Confederacy and dedicated in 1905, has become a flash point between people who see it as a symbol of racism and people who see it as memorializing Southern soldiers who died in the Civil War. City officials, expressing concern over the potential for violence, has given the UDC until the end of January to move the statue. The owners of the courthouse building has weighed in with the same arguments, saying the statue must go.
https://www.journalnow.com/news/local/confederate-statue-protests-could-be-back-before-winston-salem...