America’s past lead­ers have told us that they are from the peo­ple and for the peo­ple. 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden added a dimen­sion in his Thurs­day night accep­tance speech. Biden is of the people.

He has been in pub­lic office for a very long peri­od of time — since he was thir­ty years old — but still comes across as a per­son who needs to show­er when he gets home from work, or at least iden­ti­fies with those who do.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers still call him by a nick­name giv­en by his father – Joey.

“Joe goes right to the mid­dle,” for­mer Oba­ma cam­paign man­ag­er Jim Messi­na tweet­ed last night. The accep­tance speech was geared to folks described as “deplorables” by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s 2016 nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton, and with under­stand­ing toward those who have fall­en behind and are angry.

“Eas­i­ly the best and most affect­ing speech Biden has ever deliv­ered,” opined pres­i­den­tial his­to­ri­an Michael Bechloss.

If the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion hon­ors the best per­for­mance in a sup­port­ing role, the nod must go to a thir­teen-year-old New Hamp­shire boy named Bray­den Har­ring­ton. Har­ring­ton stut­ters, as the nation learned on Thurs­day night. So did a young Joe Biden grow­ing up in Scran­ton, Pennsylvania.

Har­ring­ton met Joe Biden on the cam­paign trail, and found that a can­di­date can be a men­tor. “With­out Joe Biden, I wouldn’t be talk­ing to you today,” he said.

“I’m just a reg­u­lar kid, and in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me more con­fi­dent about some­thing that’s both­ered me my whole life. Joe Biden cared.”

Any­body who has cov­ered Biden has such sto­ries to tell. He com­forts those who have endured per­son­al tragedy, bond­ing with his own tragedies. Peo­ple who stut­ter are giv­en Biden’s pri­vate cell phone num­ber, and asked to call him.

The guy can be long wind­ed, although not tonight.

He found five hun­dred peo­ple wait­ing at the Ames, Iowa, library in clos­ing days of the 2008 cau­cus cam­paign. He did not let them go for near­ly two hours, and only then after Jill Biden had gen­tly tugged on her husband’s coat.

2020 pres­i­den­tial Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Joe Biden greets Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell at a cam­paign event in Octo­ber 2014 (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

He made lots of friends dur­ing thir­ty-six years in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, some of them the wrong kind. Old Bull seg­re­ga­tion­ists from the Deep South still held sway in the ear­ly 1970s; Delaware was an anti-bus­ing state.

Biden went along a lit­tle too much, seek­ing to get along.

Still, this is the guy who authored the orig­i­nal Vio­lence Against Women Act (VAWA) and was an ear­ly cham­pi­on of gun respon­si­bil­i­ty in the Senate.

Even for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Robert Gates, a stern crit­ic of Biden’s coun­sel on Iraq and Afghanistan, has praised him as one of the nicest peo­ple in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. (Gates served in both the George W. Bush and Oba­ma administrations.)

Don­ald Trump is very much not of the peo­ple. He has the deep­est streak of per­son­al cru­el­ty ever wit­nessed in the Oval Office. He loves to demean peo­ple when they are down, whether in TV rat­ings or in los­ing an election.

It’s a turnoff. Polls show that more than six­ty per­cent of Amer­i­cans wish the incum­bent would stop tweet­ing. In sur­vey after sur­vey, the 45th pres­i­dent flunks the ques­tion of whether he is “con­cerned with the prob­lems of peo­ple like me.”

Biden is made of dif­fer­ent stuff.

Wit­ness a pow­er­ful line from the accep­tance speech: “We’re going to do more than praise our essen­tial work­ers… We’re final­ly going to pay them.”

The polit­i­cal right is clear­ly flummoxed.

Biden is clear­ly not a guy of the extreme left. He’s reg­u­lar, not radical.

But he’s cer­tain­ly will­ing to engage with the left.

Joe Biden stud­ies the audi­ence at Net­roots Nation 2014 in Detroit dur­ing his after­noon keynote. (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The speech Thurs­day night was force­ful, pow­er­ful and emotional.

Jill Biden is obvi­ous­ly a biased source, but accu­rate when she told an inter­view­er: “He will make a very com­pe­tent president.”

The can­di­date has also sensed the fact that Amer­i­ca is tired of strife.

The response in Biden’s speech was pitch perfect:

“This is not a par­ti­san moment. This is an Amer­i­can moment.”

He chal­lenged the nation to be bet­ter “than what divides us.”

The best moments of the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion — cap­stone events, if you will — are like­ly to be embed­ded in Don­ald Trump’s head.

Like that strik­ing line from Sen­a­tor Tam­my Duck­worth of Illi­nois: “We have a cow­ard-in-chief who won’t stand up to Vladimir Putin.”

Or the sight of Bray­den Har­ring­ton, con­quer­ing his stut­ter before an audi­ence of mil­lions. I think a lot of Amer­i­can par­ents were crying.

The bot­tom line: In Biden, we will get a Pres­i­dent who will launch the decade of the com­mon man – and woman. He has an enor­mous amount of repair work to do, but will bring empa­thy and under­stand­ing to the task.

He under­stands that he is a tran­si­tion­al fig­ure in a rest­less Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

The expe­ri­ence of a wid­ow­er rid­ing Amtrak home to Delaware each night, to be with his boys. The belief… in redemp­tion and and prac­tice of his Catholic faith (pic­ture Biden’s smudged fore­head on Ash Wednes­day)… the hap­py sec­ond mar­riage to an edu­ca­tor who taught com­mu­ni­ty col­lege while he was Vice Pres­i­dent… the heavy lifts giv­en to him by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

All of this will make for a humane and com­pe­tent president.

There will sure­ly be impa­tience on the left. Biden will not quash ide­o­log­i­cal argu­ments that his plat­form isn’t bold enough, or that he lacks the polit­i­cal will to stand up to Wall Street and Amer­i­ca’s oligarchs.

Still, our nation’s recov­ery from the chaos of Trump­ism will be helped immea­sur­ably by hav­ing a pres­i­dent who is from, for, and of the people.