--by far, is Al Giordano's.

Yet the words in that 1988 speech were essentially true, if not original. He was the first Biden to go to college. He did descend from coal miner country. This was a man with the class resentment that comes naturally to being born from below. And as the national media vetting process will disclose in the coming days, after 36 years in the US Senate, he's still one of the poorest US Senators: he never availed himself of the back-door personal enrichment techniques that most of his colleagues - Democrat and Republican - have utilized. Beyond class resentment, he retains a sense of class solidarity. His wife since 1977 never went into Washington lobbying: she remained a public schoolteacher.

Biden has also lived personal tragedies that would have splat most people like watermelons tossed from the sixth floor of a Wilmington tenement: between his first US Senate election in 1972 and being sworn in, his first wife and three small children were in a gruesome car accident. Mrs. Biden and his daughter died, his two boys were wounded, and he became a single father. Biden never quite entered the Washington DC culture so seductive to his peers: commuting from Delaware to DC, always coming home at night.

...I think [Obama and McCain] are going to get along splendidly, and have a lot of infectious fun using John McCain as a punching bag. Apollo Creed has now signed on as coach and sparring partner with Rocky Balboa. Multi-racial class warfare - there's a place for us, somewhere a place for us - now becomes the wedge against the millionaire McCain. ...

Yes, I would have preferred the "three point shot" - that Obama pick a running mate from outside of Washington - but as DC insiders go, it's interesting that Biden chose all these years to refuse to live inside it, or meet with its lobbyists. ... The 2008 election now has its very own "Comeback Kid," and his name ain't Clinton. Oh, yes, I can live with that.

Go read.