PALIN VERSUS BIDEN: REAL BLUE-COLLAR vs PHONY BLUE-COLLAR

The commentariat and the punditocracy like to expound upon Senator Joe Biden's blue-collar roots. They are certain that he will connect with the common man, and recapture the working class white voters who supported Senator Clinton in the Democrat primaries.

Hogwash.

Joe Biden's background is decidedly middle-class, and upper middle-class at that. As the Chicago Tribune reports:

In his book, "Promises to Keep," Biden writes that his father was "the most elegantly dressed, perfectly manicured, perfectly tailored car sales manager Wilmington had ever seen."

Biden notes that he himself could have gone to the best public high school in Delaware. Instead, he enrolled at Archmere Academy, a Catholic prep school that made him think he had "died and gone to Yale." He took a summer job to help pay the steep tuition, which today amounts to $18,450 a year.

That doesn't mean the family never had financial trouble. Biden says they had to move in with his mother's parents after one setback, and he remembers "when the electric company would send a collector to the house."

For nearly a year, the father was reduced to cleaning boilers for a heating company. But middle-class people are not immune to unemployment and bad business deals, and the Bidens regained their footing before long.

So where did he get his working-class reputation? Partly it comes from Biden's streetwise demeanor and his preoccupation with the fact that his family wasn't as well-off as some of the people he knew—which seems to have given him a permanent chip on his shoulder. Partly it comes from his frequent tributes to blue-collar folks, such as the firefighters who took him to the hospital when he suffered an aneurysm.

"Chip on his shoulder" is right. Anyone who has read Justice Clarence Thomas's best-selling memoir will know what a nasty piece of work Joe Biden can be.

The Biden-Palin debate will be a thing of great joy to behold and remember. Senator Biden will come out swinging -- he can't help it; his nasty, scrappy attitude dooms him to it.

Governor Palin will show that she is clear-thinking, fair-minded, and plain-speaking.

The contrast will be obvious.

Governor Palin is not a pretend blue-collar friend of the common man. She is a union member, married to a union member who works the oil fields, and they both work a commercial fishing boat.

The thing is, both Joe Biden and Barack Obama are pettifogging lawyers who answer simple questions with overly nuanced hemming and hawing. They have to, because they are working hard to conceal what they really believe and what they really have in store.

Governor Palin will be direct and forthright, because she really has nothing to hide.

The contrast will be obvious. It will be a fulfillment of Proverbs 16:18, just like the rest of the Obama Campaign.