Joe Biden:
"I've dealt with guys like Trump my whole life."
The White working person has a grievance. It isn't competition from below. It is from the political power--and sneers--from the people above. Biden feels it, too.
Joe Biden campaigned in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. He spoke fluently. He wore a mask throughout.
Biden is understood within the political left to be Mr. Establishment, the non-populist candidate, and alternative to Sanders. That isn't exactly right. Biden wants to restore "normal" politics in America, where bipartisan solutions are possible once again, but he is not the apologist and defender of an economic status quo that the Democratic left presumes. Biden speaks to the same frustration and resentment by working class Whites that got Trump the electoral votes of the Upper Midwest. Trump targets down, at Blacks, immigrants, at foreigners, at people and groups struggling to get entry into the American mainstream. Biden targets up, at the wealthy and powerful, both the ultra rich and the professional class of people who serve the interests of the very wealthy.
Watch, or read, what Joe Biden actually said. Click: transcript
Biden positions himself in contrast to Trump, of course. Biden describes Trump as exemplifying the selfishness and ineptitude of inherited wealth. Wealthy people--especially Trump--hold working people in contempt:
"Frankly, I’ve dealt with guys like Trump my whole life. Some neighbor where I come who would look down on us because we didn’t have a lot of money or your parents didn’t go to college. Guys who think they’re better than you. Guys who inherit everything they’ve ever gotten in their life and squander it. Guys who stretch and squeeze and stiff electricians and plumbers and contractors working on their hotels and casinos and golf courses just to put a few more bucks in their pocket. Guys who do everything they can to avoid paying their taxes they owe because they figure the rest of us, the little people, we can pick up the tab for the country."
Trump's contempt for you is personal, Biden said. He doesn't want to shake your hand. Trump calls you "disgusting." Biden cited Trump's rallies, where Trump protects himself while his mask-less supporters crowd together to cheer, risking themselves. Trump only cares about himself.
"The simple truth is that Donald Trump ran for office saying he would represent the forgotten man and women in this country. And then once he got in office, he forgot us. Not only did he forget them, the truth is that he never really respected us very much. Oh, he loves his rallies but the next time he holds one, look closely. Trump keeps his distance from anyone in the rally."
Biden is not Hillary Clinton, but she hovers in the background in this speech. Biden criticizes the meritocratic system of occupations and capitalism that assumes the free market on incomes is creating a just society, with people paid what they deserve. No, Biden says. Working people aren't paid enough. That work is underpaid because the educated elite thinks that is a fair wage; after all, you didn't even graduate from college. What do you expect?
As this blog has described, Hillary Clinton carried the Democratic message on how American workers can afford a decent, middle class lifestyle. It was their silver bullet: go to college, and better yet, professional school. Improve yourself. Get skills that command higher incomes in the labor market. Become a computer programmer or lawyer or marine biologist. For a vast number of Americans, their abilities and life circumstances make this inappropriate and impossible.
Biden understands that the Democratic silver bullet was an insult. It implied that the jobs they are doing don't deserve a living wage. It says that the fact that you didn't graduate from Princeton and aren't making big bucks as an investment banker is your fault.
Some advocates for racial justice will fault Biden's speech. He talked about status and justice but not about the larger oppression of people of color through White racial privilege. Biden spoke from his own experience, the perspective of a White kid. Whites like him don't feel like oppressors and overlords, sitting atop Blacks or anyone else. They don't feel privileged. They feel beat up. They are the people Biden wants back, voting Democratic.
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| Biden in New Hampshire. White, union, working class. |
Biden said:
"We’re all equal the way I was raised and we should be treated that way. I have to admit, I got my back up a little bit recently about something I saw and was on national television about the race. Some of the national… I don’t think they meant anything by it, but I don’t think they know how insulting it is. It was, Joe Biden, if elected, will be only the first president who didn’t go to an Ivy League school in a long time. Somehow that meant I didn’t belong.
How could a guy who went to a state school be president? My reaction was the same it has been my whole life and I have to admit it and I’m not proud of it, but you close the door on me because you think I’m not good enough, guess what? Like all you guys, I’m going to bust down that door. My guess is a lot of you feel the same way about a lot of slights you’ve had because of our "standing."
Biden spoke about health care: he wants to expand access. He spoke about income inequality: he wants the wealthy to pay more. He spoke about green energy, and buying American, and unions, and COVID, and more.
But the main theme of his talk was not change in policy. It was change in identity and attitude. It was about respect for the forgotten American, both White and non-White, the working people of America.
4 comments:
Finally, his handlers have given him a message he can sell...or maybe he figured it out himself. Either way I believe it can gain traction and drive a wedge into Trump's base because, I believe, it addresses a deeply held perceived resentment by many state college students and non-college students who feel dissed, subjugated or ignored by entitled ivy leaguers...the meritocracy. Think about the presidents we have had going back to (but, interestingly, not including) Reagan (Eureka College)...all Ivy Leaguers. This addresses CLASS which has been ignored by corporate-owned media. It's not perfect, but it's a start. This fits with the "underdog strategy;" Americans love the underdog (think "Rocky").
Andy Seles
Is it Ground Hog Day in Biden Land?
It was just a few posts ago where Peter linked the clip for us that was this same thing-- Biden denouncing the hard working students at ivy league schools who allegedly made fun of him for not being in the educational elite. The bright students from the Wharton School, Temple and Carnegie Melon in Pennsylvania, or across the Delaware River at Princeton or the short train ride to Columbia in New York City, these are the people he suggests got their admissions from being "rich guys". Not guys like Barrack Obama and Peter Sage who got to Harvard and Yale from middle class backgrounds and hard work. No no, in Biden’s mind academic achievement is a rebuke to him. And it is since he lied and got caught about having graduated high in his class.
Or maybe his addled memory is playing tricks on him. Maybe kids made fun of him because of his alleged stutter, something he first claimed in his 2007 autobiography-- opportunistically released with his presidential bid for 2008. They nicknamed him "Joe Impedimenta" he claims, he went on the View and talk shows claiming he overcame it by “reciting Yeats poetry for hours in front of a mirror” while attending the all white very expensive Archmere Academy prep school. (It was all white when as a US senator he sent both of his sons there). He was not known as a stutterer, he did not stutter when he allowed Anita Hill to be savaged, nor for his 1988 second campaign to be president.
Or maybe they made fun of Biden for being such a liar, or for being so insecure because his family fell out of considerable wealth into the mere middle class?
To be sure, Biden and Trump are cut from the same lying cloth, each with flagrantly phony embellishments of their own glorious histories. What Peter likes in Biden's short speech-- he takes no questions from the press, his staff will not allow it-- is the exact same canned material he uses if asked any question that even barely touches on his background. “They said I was a sucker because I live in Scranton”, over and over. Of course he is being criticized for giving only the slightest lip service to racial inequality. In Biden’s mind, merely talking about being made fun of in his youth is proof enough that he understands the plight of Black people.
And here he is regurgitating it again, in Trump straw man fashion claiming that critics are harping on him for not having "an ivy league" degree. Have you heard anyone other than Biden himself denigrating him for not being from the ivy league? Absolutely not, indeed, what you hear is supporters saying how refreshing it is not to have another ivy league presidential candidate (like Obama or Clinton I suppose). "Well I have no apologies that I do not come from the ivy league, I’m not kidding" he says almost everywhere in nearly identical words.
Biden and Trump are both phonies and prevaricators. The difference is only one of them is a really boring liar. If this is a "change election", it is whether we are going to switch one for the other. Thank God Kamala Harris is there to give our party any credibility at all.
Thad, et.al.,
Just for the record: I didn't say I agree with Biden's storyline...just that, as a strategy, it just might work and, these days, a lot of people seem to care more about strategy and winning than anything like morality...which kind of explains why we have the two candidates we have.
Andy Seles
This is slightly off topic but I have my own theory about how this Supreme Court fiasco will play out in the Republican Party election strategy. I think they might wait till after the election so Republicans don't look like lying hypocrites regarding Garland, etc. But more strategically, they could be worried that if they do seat their conservative nominee before the election, many R's will consider they've done their Godly duty and then vote for Biden because he's a more decent human than Trump.
Biden does appear quite naive in his old school, aw shucks man, personal narrative. But it could work. After all, voters bought into Trump's inane blathering.
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