In Keene, NH a young man who is a stutterer reaches out to Biden...

[Skya Rhen]

Link to tweet

[Thekaspervote]

1. Great post!! And no stuttering should not define anyone

Anyone who has overcome it has taken a disability and turned it into possibilities

[Demsrule86]

20. My son stutters...Joe is prince.

[George II]

2. That's Joe, thanks!

[Mr.Bill]

3. I was a stutterer until late in high school.

It forced me to expand my vocabulary so I could substitute synonyms for a word that would make me stutter.

[beaglelover]

8. This is my story as well.

When I fell in love with another person and felt his love in return, my stutter went away. It sometimes comes back if I'm very tired, but most of the time I can communicate with confidence these days.

[Skittles]

11. hey!

that's what I did with a coworker who stuttered - when when he was REALLY stuck I would say, think of another word! And he did, and he got very good at it!

[Mr.Bill]

12. The only problem is when the word is a proper noun

such as someone's name. I still have trouble sometimes with any name beginning with Mc. Of course now I can just say Moscow Mitch.

[Skya Rhen]

13. +1000

[Skittles]

14. HAR, you know what is important!

[emmaverybo]

4. THIS is Joe. So Joe.

World needs you Joe, for your expertise and your unflagging heart. :

[oasis]

5. Giving comfort comes second nature to Joe. nt

[BannonsLiver]

6. Joe's a good dude. I would be happy to see him as my president.

[Kingofalldems]

7. But but but Joe is bad because occasionally he makes a mistake!!!

[Mr.Bill]

15. When I hear anyone talk about his "gaffes",

I literally raise my voice and say "For fuck's sake, he is running against a guy who said we won the Revolutionary War by taking the airports!"

[BigmanPigman]

9. The Racist Rapist probably would have made fun of him

before having him removed from the area.

[Cha]

10. Thank you for this, Skya!

[Fla Dem]

16. There's no question, Joe Biden is a compassionate and caring man. nt

[Scurrilous]

18. Yep.

[catbyte]

17. My dad had a very bad stutter that got worse after he came back from the Pacific in WWII. He

got help from a wonderful speech therapist in Chicago after the war and his stutter almost disappeared. I was born 10 years after he was discharged from the Marines, so I never heard it, but I heard about it from family. I had a mild stutter as a kid, too, especially when I was very tired. I grew out of it, though.

I've always had a soft spot for Biden. My mom loved him and so wanted him to run for president but he was diagnosed with that brain aneurysm and he couldn't. She was so disappointed. I know she'd be so excited this year.

[3Hotdogs]

19. My uncle, amazing guy was a stutterer. He was a career army guy.

He went through every rank in the army, from buck private to Lt. Colonel. He was told he couldn't be a commissioned officer if he stuttered.

Somehow, he solved it.

[Gothmog]

21. I love this video

Biden is a very kind and caring man

[Gothmog]

22. I really like Biden

Link to tweet

[Celerity]

23. Great video. Actually made me tear up. This is the Biden I so admire.

[Gothmog]

24. Joe Biden's childhood struggle with a stutter: How he overcame it and how it shaped him

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Valerie Biden Owens, the former vice president’s younger sister, says that one lasting impact of his childhood stutter is that it has given him more empathy and compassion for others’ trials, and it uniquely equips him to handle Trump’s taunts.

“Trump is a bully, and Joe has been standing up to bullies his entire life,” Owens said in an interview. “Joe’s stuttering, I think, is one of the principal reasons — a major, major, major reason — that he is the good and compassionate and kind man that he is.”

About 3 million Americans suffer from the speech impediment of stuttering, marked by involuntary repetition of sounds, syllables or words. According to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, most children outgrow their stutter, but for 25% of them, stuttering is a lifelong challenge.

Biden has overcome the serious stutter of his youth, but remnants of it resurface on occasions such as when he is very tired, he said in a 2016 speech. Experts on stuttering who follow him closely say they have noticed it on several occasions during the campaign, such as an interview on “The View” when he addressed complaints about his tendency to touch and hug women while campaigning, and an April speech in Pittsburgh launching his campaign, when he struggled with words.

[Gothmog]

25. I support Joe because the man he is when the cameras aren't looking.

Link to tweet

[Cha]

26. Kicking!

[Tarheel_Dem]

27. How did I miss this? Thanks for posting. n/t

[Gothmog]

28. Here is a great story

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Cha]

29. KR!

[Gothmog]

30. What Joe Biden Can't Bring Himself to Say

I was a stutter until about 4th grade. I find these attacks on Biden to be sad. This article about Joe's stuttering really hit home with me. The discussion of the movie The King's Speech was very moving for me.

Link to tweet

In Biden’s office, the first time I bring up his current stuttering, he asks me whether I’ve seen The King’s Speech. He speaks almost mystically about the award-winning 2010 film. “When King George VI, when he stood up in 1939, everyone knew he stuttered, and they knew what courage it took for him to stand up at that stadium and try to speak—and it gave them courage … I could feel that. It was that sinking feeling, like—oh my God, I remember how you felt. You feel like, I don’t know … almost like you’re being sucked into a black hole.”

Presidential candidates usually don’t speak about their bleakest moments, certainly not this viscerally. It resembles the way Biden writes in his memoir about the aftermath of the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and young daughter and critically injured his two sons, Beau and Hunter: “I could not speak, only felt this hollow core grow in my chest, like I was going to be sucked inside a black hole.”

A few weeks later, I ask Jill Biden what she remembers about sitting next to her husband during the movie. “It was one of those moments in a marriage where you just sort of understand without words being spoken,” she says.

As he watched The King’s Speech, Biden accurately guessed that the screenwriter, David Seidler, was a stutterer. “He showed me a copy of a speech they found in an attic that the king had actually used, where he marks his—it’s exactly what I do!” Biden tells me, his voice lifting. “My staff, when I have them put something on a prompter—I wish I had something to show you.”

I agree with Joe that it would be difficult for trump to use Joe's stutter against him

In Biden’s office, as my time is about to run out, I bring up the fact that Trump crudely mocked a disabled New York Times reporter during the 2016 campaign. “So far, he’s called you ‘Sleepy Joe.’ Is ‘St-St-St-Stuttering Joe’ next?”

“I don’t think so,” Biden says, “because if you ask the polls ‘Does Biden stutter? Has he ever stuttered?,’ you’d have 80 to 95 percent of people say no.” If Trump goes there, Biden adds, “it’ll just expose him for what he is.”

I ask Biden something else we’ve been circling: whether he worries that people would pity him if they thought he still stuttered.

He scratches his chin, his fingers trembling slightly. “Well, I guess, um, it’s kind of hard to pity a vice president. It’s kind of hard to pity a senator who’s gotten six zillion awards. It’s kind of hard to pity someone who has had, you know, a decent family. I-I-I-I don’t think if, now, if someone sits and says, ‘Well, you know, the kid, when he was a stutterer, he must have been really basically stupid,’ I-I-I don’t think it’s hard to—I’ve never thought of that. I mean, there’s nobody in the last, I don’t know, 55 years, has ever said anything like that to me.”

This is an issue that I have strong feelings about.