Joe Biden: Experience With a Big Heart Is a Winning Combo

Posted by Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake at 11:14 PM on October 2, 2008.

This moment, when Joe Biden talked about being a single parent unsure whether his sons would make it after his wife and daughter were tragically killed in a car accident?

Most real thing I've seen in politics in a long, long time.

When Biden was speaking about the folks he grew up with in Scranton and Wilmington -- their fear about how to pay for the heat in the winter, and groceries, and medical bills? You could feel the empathy pouring out of the television.

He wants to help those folks. They are his neighbors, whether they live next door or across the continent.

Sarah Palin has clearly been on camera enough to hit her marks, and deliver her rote, frenzied lines for that closing speech or to launch into yet another hyperactive filibuster. I give her credit for having a great camera presence, but so much of it felt scripted, manic and manufactured -- down to the newly caramelized color of her highlights that they toned down with a color rinse from the usual brassier version for the stage lighting tonight.

Especially the moment where she was griping about corporations taking advantage of folks, while she's spent the last five weeks chumming around with corporate lobbyist cronies of John McCain's. (What ya do, not what ya say, you betcha! *wink*)

Frankly, I have had enough of a manufactured false front in the last eight years, haven't you? I don't want to have a beer with my leaders. I want them to do their jobs, and care enough to do them well.

Joe Biden? He was real. He spoke from real experience, from his heart and his gut. He cared about the subjects, whether it was protecting women from violence or Afghanistan or home heating bills for the poor. And I loved him for it tonight.

Looks like CBS' undecideds poll agrees: Biden -- 46%, Palin 21%.  Nate has more.

Christy Hardin Smith is a former attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review.