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When you think about it, the amount of attention Joe Biden got for going to Costco Thursday seems a little much: The vice-president was giving a post-election stump speech in a store that has 447 locations in this country. So why is it such a big deal when Biden does normal-people things? We have a couple theories. One is that reporters are terrible snobs who fetishize the white working class and have the teeniest bit of condescension towards Biden, who seems to come from that class, compared to, say, Jon Huntsman, who most certainly does not come from that class and does not get the weird coverage when he poses with guns or whatever. Two is that in an age when the primary analysis of any social interaction is whether or not it is "awkward," Biden is somehow able to seem completely lacking in self-consciousness or anxiety, even as cameras capture him nuzzling female strangers.
Take, for example, these two images from September 16, 2008, when Biden was hanging out in the cafe car on an Amtrak train. It looks like we've caught an unguarded private moment between Biden and a woman working on the train in this photo...
...but from a photo taken from the same car at about the same time, we can see Biden knew full we'll every movement was being recorded.