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WORLD> America
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Blue-collar vote, one gaffe at a time
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-22 08:55 Media, Pa. — Joe Biden has a “bad habit” of telling voters what he thinks, he told a gymnasium full of Montana supporters recently. But that’s not his only bad habit.
In the four weeks since becoming Barack Obama’s running mate, Biden has been a reliable fount of gaffes, awkward statements and hyperbole. He is a candidate in the highest-profile election in the world, operating under the unrelenting scrutiny of the media Hydra, but he seems constitutionally incapable of conforming his quirky and anachronistic political style to the punishing and unforgiving modern news cycle. Among other things, the Delaware senator has said that Hillary Rodham Clinton may have been a better vice presidential pick; accidentally referred to his partner as “Barack America”; told a wheelchair-bound man to “stand up”; and called Michelle Obama’s convention speech “the most remarkable speech I have heard in my life.”
Attendees at his events report a genuine connection with Biden, saying they feel as if he’s a regular guy, telling it like it is. “I think he’s speaking for the working man. He really struck a lot of chords with me,” said Todd Wilhelm, a retired air traffic controller from Arizona who moved to Pennsylvania to help his union’s get-out-the-vote efforts there. A Clinton supporter during the primary, Wilhelm said Biden helps Obama by speaking to the concerns of middle-class Americans. “I love the guy,” he said at an event in suburban Philadelphia. There’s no question what constituency Biden’s aiming for as he travels to key Rust Belt states and other battlegrounds. He evokes a working man’s ethic, talking about the respect and dignity that is tied up in a job as he paces the stage, microphone in hand. |
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