It didn’t take Joe Biden long to fall into line with the Barack Obama no-drill policy.  After saying Monday that he didn’t oppose drilling in the OCS, he told an audience yesterday he opposed it.  Is this change American can believe in?

Barack Obama didn’t take running mate Joe Biden to the woodshed for his remarks Monday on offshore drilling, which broke from Obama’s strong reservations to it. But Biden on Wednesday nonetheless offered a different opinion: “I’m against it.”

Biden flatly told voters this afternoon that he opposes offshore drilling for oil and gas and lambasted companies for failing to tap many coastal sites they have already leased from the federal government. …

Biden stayed perfectly on message — Obama’s message.

It seems as though the Democrats are heading in the wrong direction.  Instead of following the overwhelming will of the electorate to increase domestic production, Biden changed his position to more directly contradict it.  With energy being one of the top issues in this campaign, Biden’s sudden surrender to the environmentalists won’t go unnoticed.

Biden went even further down the fringie road, too.  He told his audience that oil companies have leases on which they don’t drill now, asking “Why do you think [that is]?”  Maybe because they can’t find oil on those particular leases, which is why they want to look for more promising locations.  If they don’t drill long enough, under current law the leases will return to the federal government anyway.  They don’t make money by sitting on expensive leases, no matter how many conspiracy theories Biden can spin in his imagination.

Even more tiresome was Biden’s sudden insistence on draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  He used Clinton’s election-year release as a model, saying that it dropped prices by 18%.  The very obvious response was that it clearly did not solve the problem — because oil prices have gone up sharply again.  Also, that’s a momentary increase of supply to effect a price decrease.  If that’s such a great strategy, why not permanently increase supply to effect a long-term price decrease?

Not only did Biden lose his testicular fortitude, he lost his economic sense as well.