Biden and the gushing women...

Biden greets volunteers in Springfield, Ohio. | AP Photo

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio -- Given the reception Vice President Joe Biden received at a field office here Tuesday, it's a wonder that he and the president are not faring better in the polls with seniors. It's clear that Biden, at least, appears to be faring well with senior ladies.

Biden walked in for the surprise visit carrying a stack of large pizzas for the 80 or so volunteers – mostly women over 50 – who were gathered there, phone banking. The shrieks began within seconds: “Oh Jesus!” “Joe Biden’s here?” “Oh my God, oh, my God!”

“Oh Lord, please don’t let me faint,” Patrice Toliver said, a phone to her ear. She was in the middle of speaking with a voter, and was frantically trying to explain what was happening. “He’s coming into headquarters right now!” she exclaimed.

As Biden came closer, she abruptly hung up on the voter and stood still and silent and wide-eyed, seemingly shell-shocked.

“You’re the reason we’re going to win Ohio,” the vice president told the group.

One woman replied, “No, you’re the reason!”

Biden then began working the room, taking pictures, giving hugs, shaking hands, stroking faces.

“He’s so freakin’ personable!” said 74-year-old Ellen Wallace as she watched him greet people. “It’s unbelievable. He’s just a magnet.”

One woman approached him and without so much as a hello, gushed, “I have a cup o’ Joe every morning.” This reporter could not hear his reply, but a colleague insisted that Biden then experienced a rare moment of speechlessness.

The volunteers were seated at tables lined up in four long rows, and as he approached the third row, where a group of four women sat, he told them a few things about his mother.

“The good Lord created two perfect women: the Blessed Mother and my mom,” he said.

Biden went on to tell a story he told at the Democratic National Convention about being bullied and smacked around by a neighborhood boy when he was growing up in Scranton, Penn. He said that when he told his mother what happened, she pushed him to confront the boy and punch him in the nose. “’Joey do it,’” Biden recounted her saying. When he did, the boy ran away crying, Biden said.

The story prompted a man standing nearby, Springfield resident and OFA volunteer Rodney Hillard, to say, “Joe, that’s how you did it at the debate, you showed that Paul Ryan.”

Biden smiled, then said, “You all learned what the word ‘malarkey’ meant, right?“

One woman who scored a “huge hug” from Biden, Roxandra Antoniadis, said afterward that she will never forget it.

“It was the thrill of my life!” she said. “He’s magnificent.”

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/10/biden-and-the-gushing-women-139412.html?hp=l1_b1