Jonathan Lemire: Biden Is the Leader Who Is Best Able To Discuss Grief

EXCERPT:

LEMIRE: “This is something that the president has never shown, any real ability to connect with real voters, to display sort of empathy, and it’s dated from his early days in office where he’s responded to other terrible tragedies. And that could be a mass shooting, or of course, a natural disaster. We all remember him in Puerto Rico tossing out paper towels like they were basketballs after a terrible hurricane there, and that he has never been one to really show — and polls reflect this — that he understands what people are going through, that he understands their suffering or pain because they’ve lost a loved one or a job, meanwhile, that might be Joe Biden’s greatest strength. We have talked about on this show many times that he is perhaps in all of American politics the leader who is best able to discuss grief, because in many ways of what he, himself, has suffered, the immense personal tragedy that he has gone through but he also really relishes those personal connections he’s able to be there for someone else and the pandemic has largely robbed him of the ability to do that because he hasn’t been able to interact with voters like the way that he normally would or would like. But one small moment last week during one of the September 11th memorials, during one of the remembrances, he found an elderly woman there who had lost a loved one in the attacks cameras caught him talking to her for a few minutes and it was a powerful connection, and voters see that and voters respond to that.”