U.S. Sen. Joe Biden

U.S. Sen. Joe Biden

Yes, yes,  Joe Biden speaks like a death row inmate eating his last meal. He seems terrified of finishing, of closing his mouth.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s long answers may require patience, or even test that of his audience, but as rural Iowans reflected on his remarks during the caucus season, they left with the sense that Biden respects them enough to go deep with his answers, to spend hours before crowds in half empty small-town restaurants. libraries and other venues where I saw this lion of the U.S. Senate make genuine connections with the very voters largely elusive to Obama: older and rural.

In one of the more remarkable campaign events of the hundreds I’ve covered in four Iowa caucus seasons, Biden spent two and a half hours talking with just over 20 people in tiny Lohrville. Biden showed a command of old-school Iowa campaign tactics, approaching people and putting his hands on their shoulders and looking intently at them as he answered questions. Biden even got down on bended knee to answer a question from a woman who said she was undecided and would base her vote on Iraq. Using a blank wall as a backdrop Biden at one point pantomimed the history and geography of Iraq and its neighbors.

At an earlier Biden  stop at Sam’s Sodas and Sandwiches in downtown Carroll, I closely watched the crowd, which included many people I’ve known for years, like former Iowa Lt. Gov. Art Neu, a Carroll Republican who is now a member of State Board of Corrections. Countless rural Iowans told me that were it not for the celebrity field in front of Biden in the polls, the veteran U.S. senator from Delaware would be their choice. The results of the caucuses didn’t reveal this abiliy to reach rural voters as his campaign was seen as but an undercard to the title fight. But if you were there with Biden, you saw it.

Not to be overlooked is the fact that one of the stronger rural Iowa editorial voices backed Biden well before voting in the January caucuses.

Last October, the Storm Lake Times, a voice for rural progressives, endorsed Biden for the Democratic nomination for presidency.

Art Cullen, the editor and co-owner of the northwest Iowa newspaper, and a journalist Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Gartner calls one of the two best editorial writers in the state, wrote this:

Biden is astounding with his sheer command of world politics and conflict. He has distinguished himself by offering the only workable plan to get us out of harm’s way in Iraq. He advocates a loose federal system under which the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds would each control their own territory, somewhat similar to the notion of American federalism. He would remove American troops to a safe distance in friendly environs - Kurdistan and Kuwait, to name two - and let the Iraqis solve their own problems. The Senate on a bipartisan vote recently endorsed the Biden-Brownback plan, which dovetails into the thinking of the most prescient politician on the issue, Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Penn., who led the charge against deeper involvement in Iraq that turned the 2006 Congressional elections.

See Biden before a rural audience yourself. You can watch the following video of Biden working a crowd in Carroll, Iowa, here.