This week I’ve been hearing a lot about Joe Biden. According to some of what I’ve been hearing, the story is that Biden is the person who can beat Trump. The thinking goes that Biden is a regular working class guy who can win back some of the voters in the Midwestern states Trump won. As David Brooks puts it:
Joe Biden has spent nearly his entire adult life in the Senate or as vice president, but no one could fairly accuse him of being haughty or elitist. People still have the instinct to call him Joe. Average Joe.
How will Biden’s working class persona hold up under scrutiny? Can he win back voters in the Midwest that cost Clinton the election? With this in mind, let’s look at what someone might look like who can win back working class Midwestern voters and take a look at how Biden and others measure up.
Whether you like Michael Moore or not, in July 2016 he predicted Trump would win the election and he predicted exactly how he would do it—by winning Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The criteria he used were:
- Midwest math—Stance on “free” trade policies (that destroyed the Midwest)
- The last stand of the angry white man—There’s a lot of white men who feel endangered in the Midwest.
- The old way of doing things—The establishment that has been fucking things up since the ‘80s is not popular with millennials.
- Depressed liberals—Liberals who aren’t excited will still probably vote Democratic but won’t do much else (like volunteer or convince others to vote Democratic)
- The Jesse Ventura effect—This is basically when people get so angry or frustrated that they vote just to fuck things up. Sometimes it’s almost like a joke to piss others off.
How does Biden compare against these criteria?