Subject: Joe Biden, the anti-Obama
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "beau biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander Snyder-Mackler" <[email-masked]>, "Ted Kaufman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:29:31 -0400

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Joe Biden, the anti-Obama
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By ALEXANDER BURNS | 9/16/11 3:49 PM EDT

President Obama has long struggled to overcome the perception that he's aloof and emotionally remote from struggling Americans. There's one member of the Democrats' presumptive 2012 ticket who doesn't have that problem, as this pool report from Vice President Biden's Friday visit to flood-stricken Duryea, Pennsylvania, shows:

Mr. Pliska showed the vice president photos of the home before the flood. Mr. Biden relayed the story of his local ties and his great-grandfather, state Sen. Edward F. Blewitt, who represented Scranton between 1906-1910.

"And he was an engineer. And one of the things he worked on was  dealing with the sewer system and the flooding and all the rest," he said.

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As Mr. Pliska began to show the photos, he started to choke up again and the vice president embraced him with his left arm.

"You'll redo it again, man. You'll redo it again," he said. "You will do this again, we'll help you."

"I can't come back," Mr. Pliska said.

"Yeah, you can come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can come back," Mr. Biden replied. "I'm telling you you could comeback," he said, as a teary Mr. Pliska shook his head.

"We'll work with you," Mr. Moss said.

"There's a lot of help," Mr. Biden said. "So hang on. This is no time to give up. Would he (Mr. Pliska's grandfather) give up?"

"No," Mr. Pliska replied.

"He'd be back building it so you've got to come back and build it," Mr. Biden said. "And besides, look at this guy, he can help you," he said pointing to Mr. Pliska's son, James, 12.

"He can't even pull a weed," Mr. Pliska said.

"Oh sure he can, sure he can," Mr. Biden said. "His generation's even better than ours."

They kept looking at the photo album of the home and Mr. Pliska showed the vice president the wood features of the home.

"You don't want to move down to Delaware with me, do ya?" Mr. Biden asked James, 12, drawing laughter. "He don't want to move, he wants to stay here .. You did this once, you could do it again."

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

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