Jake Tapper is counting and is now up to seventeen column-worthy Joe Biden gaffes. Joe Biden appeared before a group of lawyers (sounds like a joke is coming already, huh?) and he did not disappoint. Actually Number Seventeen includes a few gaffes–an admission that John McCain really hasn’t changed (so much for “He’s lost his maverick image and gone to the dark side!”) and a triple declaration that no one has done more for trial lawyers than he, that lawyers and Big Labor are all that stands between America and barbarism, and that he needs all of them on election night. A sample:

Biden said that he’s “done more than any other senator combined” for trial lawyers.

“There are two people — you’ve heard me say it before — two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate,” Biden said. “It’s you and organized labor. That’s it. That is it. So, mark my words, mark my words, if we lose this election, you are going to continue to see a continuation of the onslaught on everything we care about. For real. For real. So, I’m not only thanking you for your help. I would think you’re all absolutely brain-dead if you didn’t help. And I mean it.”

No, I don’t know how a Senator can “combine” with himself, but none of the rest of it makes any more sense. More importantly, he’s fast becoming a reason to question what in the world Barack Obama was thinking.

And yes, there is a Biden gaffe ad already out on clean coal. One down, sixteen more to go?