BIDEN’S LATEST GAFFE ON THE TRAIL HITS HUB
“Rite Aid” … wrong store! Joe Biden’s latest campaign-trail gaffe is an inspiring tale about a Boston strike — it just didn’t happen quite like Joe said.
The presidential frontrunner was speaking at an AFL-CIO event in Philadelphia Tuesday when he recounted visiting Boston last April to address the Stop & Shop workers’ strike — except he called it the “Rite Aid strike.”
“When I went up to the — there was the Rite Aid strike. I looked out in that parking lot when I was talking with the folks and I was walking a picket line up in Boston,” Biden said. “And what happened? I looked out there and I’ll bet you 40% of the people there were non-union.”
Biden, not yet a presidential candidate at the time, lent his support to the striking Stop & Shop employees outside the chain’s South Bay Center location, after more than 30,000 workers walked off their jobs following a breakdown in contract negotiations that lasted 11 days.
Stop & Shop is headquartered in Quincy. Rite Aid was founded in Biden’s native Scranton, Pa., and is based out of the Harrisburg area. Neither company responded to a request for comment on Biden’s gaffe Tuesday.
“Was he thinking about Rite Aid because he’s upset because he couldn’t get his prescription filled?” quipped Democratic consultant Scott Ferson.
The mix-up was the latest in a string of campaign-trail bloopers large and small that have dogged the 76year-old former vice presi
dent, raising questions of his mental fitness and prompting an attack from low-polling rival Julián Castro in last week’s debate.
But the lapses have yet to significantly impact Biden’s standing in the polls.
Voters surveyed by the Herald at New Hampshire political events this month have offered mixed reviews of Biden’s slip-ups.
“Joe has a long history of doing things that are a little unusual and saying things that are a little unusual and off the cuff. But after a while, if it keeps up, yeah, it becomes an issue,” Elliott Lasky, 74, an undecided delegate, told the Herald at the New Hampshire State Democratic Convention. “We want to see somebody who’s in total command of what he’s doing, not only on the national stage, but the world stage.”
At a Biden event in Laconia, 82-year-old Chris Powers said, “Everybody can misspeak on a word. … He’s not lying, which is what you hear so much of.”
Later, in New Castle, supporter Alain Ades said, “The thing about it is, (President) Trump has set the standard so high for mistakes that Joe is kind of immune.”
But at the back of the crowd in the seaside park, Greg Tuveson held up a sign reading, “Welcome back to Vermont Joe” — referring to an August slip-of-the-tongue in which Biden said Keene, N.H., was in Vermont.
“I can respect a sense of humor. But brother, if you want to lead the country, you’ve got to know where you are,” Tuveson said.