But then, there's that "basically educated" thing, isn't it? Our aggressive willingness, as a society, to not know things about how it actually works, and then excuse ourselves for it, troubles me pretty deeply.
This would be like me saying that due to X's long and distinguished career in tennis, most americans should know who they are. The problem is that most americans don't follow tennis at all, especially not to the extent that they are familiar with particular players, unless they are superstars that always have their name all over the news (I can think of two for which this might be the case). And senators seem to have their name in the prominent news less frequently than tennis stars, honestly.
Joe Biden was a very well known senator before he became Vice President, any criteria you use to call yourself relatively informed about US politics when you had never heard of Joe Biden is flawed.
I had to struggle to recall the name. The man is utterly unimportant to me, though I do hope he is eventually punished for the crimes of his administration.