Comic relief: Vice President Biden's superlative speech!

THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2016

The analysts' fears subside: For our money, there have been three very good speeches at this week's convention.

Personally, we've liked Joe Biden's speech best. We recommend the following chunk, not for what Biden says about Hillary Clinton, but instead for what this chunk of his speech says about Biden himself.

Biden discussed the loss of his son, the late Beau Biden. Then, he offered this. To watch the whole speech, click here:

BIDEN (7/27/16): His wife Hallie and his two kids are here tonight. But as Ernest Hemingway once wrote, the world breaks everyone, and afterwards, many are strong at the broken places.

I've been made strong at the broken places by my love, Jill; by my heart, my son Hunter; and the love of my life, my Ashley. And by all of you, and I mean this sincerely, those who have been through this, you know I mean what I say. By all of you, your love, your prayers, your support.

But you know what? We talk about, we think about the countless thousands of other people who suffered so much more than we have, with so much less support, so much less reason to go on. But they get up every morning, every day. They put one foot in front of the other. They keep going. That's the unbreakable spirit of the people of America. That's who we are.

That's who we are. Don't forget it. Like the people in the neighborhood that Jill and I grew up in, she in Willow Grove and me down in Wilmington and Claymont. The kid in Claymont with the most courage, who always jumped in when you were double teamed or your back was against the wall, who became a cop because he always wanted to help people. The middle daughter of three daughters who always made her mother smile, who was a hero to her sisters, now a major in the United States Marine Corps because, "Mr. Vice President, I wanted to serve my country."

The teachers who Jill knows and so many of you know who take money out of their own pockets to buy pencils and notebooks for their students who can't afford them. Why? Why? Because being a teacher is not what they do. It's who they are.

You know what I know. For real, these are the people who are the heart and soul of this country. It's the America that I know, the America that Hillary knows and Tim Kaine knows.

You know, I've known Hillary for well over 30 years. Before she was first lady of the United States. When she became first lady. We served together in the United States Senate. And during her years as secretary of state, once a week, we had breakfast in my home, the vice president's residence.

Everybody knows she's smart. Everybody knows she's tough. But I know what she's passionate about. I know Hillary.

Hillary understands. Hillary gets it. Hillary understands that the college loan is about a lot more than getting a qualified student education. It's about saving the mom and the dad from the indignity of having to look at their talented child and saying, "Sonny, honey, I'm so sorry. The bank wouldn't lend me the money. I can't help you to get to school."

I know that about Hillary. Hillary understood that, for years, millions of people went to bed staring at the ceiling, thinking, "Oh, my God, what if I get breast cancer or he has a heart attack? I will lose everything. What will we do then?" I know about Hillary Clinton.

We hope that's true about Hillary Clinton. But nobody knows how to talk about "ordinary people like us," as he later put it, in quite the way Joe Biden does.

He has access to amazing emotional memory, and he isn't afraid or ashamed to speak about "ordinary people like us."

As we watched him, he couldn't help thinking about our tribe's unwise inclination to name-call those "ordinary people like us." But just watch that part of Biden's speech. He has vast depths of memory.

Now for a moment of snark:

The analysts breathed a sigh of relief when Biden spoke so well of Candidate Clinton. The youngsters had been tied up in knots ever since they saw Rachel Maddow make these remarks, back at the end of June:

MADDOW (6/30/16): Well, President Obama and Hillary Clinton have now rescheduled their first joint campaign appearance, it's going to be next week in North Carolina. And today we learned that, in addition to Hillary Clinton appearing with President Obama on Tuesday in North Carolina, later in the week, on Friday, she's also going to do a joint campaign appearance with Vice President Joe Biden.

And that is interesting for a couple of different reasons. Now, the first reason is that ever since Vice President Biden went through his long, public, to-ing and fro-ing over whether or not he himself was going to run for president this year, ever since then, there have been a lot of Washington whispers about whether or not Vice President Biden really, truly, deeply supports Hillary Clinton for president and whether he would really, truly deeply, enthusiastically campaign for her in this election.

Well, we know he's going to campaign for her in this election, and we'll see what that looks like a week from tomorrow when they campaign together just outside the place that oddly is both of their hometowns. Both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and they will be together in Scranton next week.

Say what? There had been "a lot of Washington whispers about whether or not Vice President Biden would really, truly deeply, enthusiastically campaign for Candidate Clinton?"

We tried to tell the analysts that was just the usual crap, but they were now frankly scared. Later, that Scranton event was canceled because of a terrorist event, and the fear settled into their bones.

In fairness, there was more than simple fear back on June 30. At first, the analysts were frightened when Maddow offered that analysis. Soon, though, several youngsters emitted a familiar cry:

"There she goes again!" Or so the analysts said.

Biden and Clinton were both born in Scranton? These analysts swore that it just wasn't so! The youngsters began to tear their hair over this latest "trivia fail." And sure enough! Before the program was done that night, Maddow offered one of the comical, overwrought self-corrections which have been flooding her air.

The biggest problem with Maddow's program in the past year has been her manifest refusal to fight the power. She never made the slightest attempt to clarify or explain the whole email mess. And when Comey the God seemed to peddle a scam a few weeks back, the world's biggest fame-and-lucre hound didn't so much as say boo.

Rachel defers to the power, whether we notice or not.

The second problem with Maddow's show has been the tons of silly, propagandistic trivia with which her viewers are now assailed. The new, improved Rachel Maddow loves to dumb us liberals down with silly, trivial presentations about how dumb and pathetic The Others are. Sadly, this pandering seems to make us love her more.

This silly corporate "cable news" show has become a corporate mess. That said, intermittent comic relief comes from the program's frequent errors, and from the overwrought self-corrections with which some of these errors are met.

We do get to chuckle at those self-corrections. Tomorrow, we'll start with Maddow's overwrought apology about the Scranton bungle/fail. We'll struggle onward from there.

For the record, "ordinary people like us" live in Scranton. It's best not to call people names.