On Thursday night, former Vice President Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination for president. Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris look to unseat the demon-team of Donald Trump and Mike Pence this November. The ghouls have already begun seeping out from their crypts to make the kinds of wildly hypocritical and factually ignorant attacks on the Biden/Harris ticket that we have come to expect. But before all of these slings and arrows begin, even before Biden took the stage to make his speech, one very important and moving story was told by 13-year-old Brayden Harrington of New Hampshire. Harrington met Joe Biden in his home state, when he and his father went to see Joe on the campaign trail a few months ago.
Brayden explained that Biden took a special interest in his story. Brayden was there to see the former vice president because, like Biden, Brayden himself struggles with stuttering. Biden, who overcame his childhood stuttering and has been very open about it, took Brayden’s phone number and even met with him later to show him some of the things he did to work on massaging his stuttering as well as the steps he takes today, as an adult, when he needs to give speeches. Brayden turned his written speech to the camera to show the audience that he was applying some of the note-marking techniques Joe had taught him.
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The meeting Brayden was referring to can be seen in video that has gone around the internets for months now. I’m not a Biden fan, you can read one of my apprehensions about Biden here. But you cannot deny that he is both the best candidate in the run for president of the United States, nor can you argue that he seems like a decent person—something with which Donald Trump cannot compete.
This issue is clearly a very personal one of Biden. The bullying one can face as a child with some form of a speech impediment can be cruel. As an adult you may face crueler people, like former White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, willing to mock your struggles with stuttering for political points with an even more sociopathic president for a boss.
To be clear, whatever your political bent is—whether you believe Obama is a secret Muslim caliphate theocrat or whether you believe in the need to redistribute wealth in our society, you cannot imagine Donald Trump being able to have a human moment like the one Brayden and Joe shared. You cannot imagine it because it is very likely Donald Trump is incapable of experiencing it, and it is equally unlikely that Trump has any interest or understanding that it can be found and one should seek it with other humans.
