Working Class Hero?

by digby

I can’t help but recall an email I received a few years about Joe Biden. I had written some rude remark about him — he’s long been one of those blogospheric punch lines for his blowhard ways — and the reader took issue with me, explaining that he was a constituent who didn’t know Biden personally but had heard him speak many times and seen him at political gatherings. He said that Biden’s most outstanding quality when you saw him in action was that he had the common touch — a regular working class type who really understood how to talk to average folks.

I didn’t see it myself. Observing him over the years in press conferences and as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee had given me the impression of a typical blowhard senator so I was a little surprised by it. But the comment stuck with me because it seemed so incongruous — yet when I looked at his record and his personal story it seemed it could be true. I hope it is. It could be helpful in this campaign.

The wingnuts aren’t taking any chances. I’m watching Fox obsess on the huge size and scope of Biden’s house and his “compound” even though Biden happens to be one of the least wealthy members of the Senate. Because they are making such a fetish about it this morning,(admittedly at least partly out of reflexive junior high bitchiness after the McCain houses gaffe)it’s clear they are working overtime to make Biden into an “elitist.” Cavuto has already brought up arugula, Obama working out (“he’s so thin”)his 4 million dollar take last year and Biden’s “estate” that’s “so big, many huge SUVs don’t even fill up the driveway.” They are on a tear.

As I have said many times, conservatives simply don’t recognize the concept of hypocrisy. It’s the old “I know you are but what am I” theory of politics. And it can be quite effective if they are allowed to get away with it. If they have their way, McCain will soon be a poor, retired war hero with a little cabin in the desert and Biden and Obama will be Big City Fancy Men, livin’ large.

Update: And yes, the bankruptcy bill was an abomination. A lot of working class people probably wish their hero would have laid out on that one…

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