Biden tries to win over blue-collar voters
He’s become the Dems’ liaison to white working class
WASHINGTON—Taking the stage in Trump country in southwestern Pennsylvania earlier this month, the former vice president began simply: “My name is Joe Biden, and I’m from Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
With that nod to blue-collar roots, Mr. Biden launched into a paean to working-class values in the kind of place that has long been lost to Democrats — and that he hopesto win back.
Campaigning alongside fellow Democrat Conor Lamb, Mr. Biden offered not just policy proposals, but firsthand experience. He described how his father struggled to pay for his college, worried about health insurance, and raised a family in a crowded splitlevel home — and argued that Democrats are offering the policies to help those same kind of people today.
Crossing the country and much of Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden has become the Democrats’ informal liaison to the white working class, which makes up much of President Donald Trump’s loyal base. In the process, he has stirred speculation that he is angling for a showdown with Mr.Trump in 2020.
The president has apparently taken notice. On Thursday morning, he blasted Mr. Biden on Twitter.
“Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “He would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!”
The attack came in response to Mr. Biden’s saying that if he were in high school, he would “beat the hell” out of Mr. Trump over the president’s lewd comments about groping women on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. Mr. Biden made the comment at the University of Miami during a busy public schedule that has kept him in the spotlight.
Twod ays after Mr. Lamb’s victory last week in the special election in the 18th Congressional District in southwestern Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden endorsed two more Democratic challengers in tough congressional races just outside Philadelphia. Last Friday, he spoke at Duquesne University, honoring the late Steelers owner Dan Rooney and hailing their “shared Irish values.”
He has written a book, is advocating to find a cure for cancer, and recently launched the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania.
And on Wednesday, Mr. Biden met in Washington with congressional Democrats’ Blue Collar Caucus, co-founded by Rep. Brendan Boyle of Philadelphia.
In that meeting, Mr. Boyle recalled, Mr. Biden told nearly 40 Democrats that after so many workingclass voters supported Mr. Trump, “they want to come home again.”
The former vice president signaled that he’s going to try to help bring them back in 2018 as the parties battle for control of the House.
“He’s fired up and ready to go in terms of campaigning for Democrats across the country in this election,” Mr. Boyle said. “His energy and enthusiasm and passion are just as high as anyone who’s in their 20s or 30s.”
Amid the aggressive liberalism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and the cosmopolitan appeal of Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, many Democrats see Mr. Biden as the kind of messenger they need in old steel townsand coal country.
Mr. Lamb brought Mr. Biden in for the closing days of his congressional race in a district Mr. Trump had won by 20 percentage points. They visited a carpenters training hall and then rallied in front of several hundred Democrats.
As Mr. Biden gave his 30minute speech, you didn’t have to look very hard to see the makings of a presidential campaign theme or, at the very least, a road map for fellow Democrats.
Describing how his father, a used-car salesman, worried about what would happen to the family if he got sick, Mr. Biden said insurance is about more than health, “it’s about peace of mind.” He told how his father was unable to get a loan to help send him to college.
“I’m so ashamed,” Mr. Biden recalled his father saying, bringing the crowd to a hush.
His voice soft, he said, “Middle class where I come from is not just a number, it’s a value set.”
And he hammered House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., arguing that Republicans were giving “obscene” tax cuts to the wealthy rather than paying for college programs or job training.
He never mentioned Mr. Trump by name.
Joseph DiSarro, a Republican who is chair of the political science department at Washington & Jefferson College, believes that the former vice president is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign and that he could provide the kind of message Democrats have lacked.
To Joan C. Williams, who has written extensively about working-class voters and Mr. Trump’s appeal to them, a focus on economic struggles — not exclusively cultural ones — is critical.
“As a Democrat, to me, it’s really painful when millions of Americans see Donald Trump as the person who is articulating their sense that they’re losing hold of the American dream,” said Ms. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law. “To me, that’s a progressive issue. Broadly shared economic growth is one of the absolute tenets of what Democrats should stand for as a party.”
She, like Mr. Boyle, said much of Democrats’ problem comes down to their tone.
“Thewhite working class has no problem with people with money. What they have a problem with is being condescended to,” said Ms. Williams, who has written a book called “White Working Class.”
Mr. Biden, in a statement Wednesday to the Inquirer and Daily News, began with that very point.
“We need to once again let working people around this country know that we hear them. That we understand their problems. High school educated, workingclass folks have real concerns — they’re not imagining what they’re living through,” the former vice president said. “They want to be respected for the work they do.”