It is not just that the former vice president, who jumped into the presidential race last week, is a native son of a state that is a 2020 must-win for Democrats.
The argument is that Biden’s brand of politics — appealing to a traditional coalition shredded by Donald Trump in 2016 — still has latent appeal in Pennsylvania and across the Midwest, and that stitching the coalition back together would restore Democrats to the White House.
Biden’s entry was met, particularly on social media, by a chorus of doubts at times bordering on derision from critics and progressive activists who questioned his age, his status as a white man and his political luggage from more than four decades in public life.
But as Biden prepares for his first appearance of the campaign, at a union event in Pittsburgh Monday, interviews across the state last week indicated that he draws from a wellspring of support among three key constituencies crucial to his campaign. He has the potential to attract suburban moderates defecting from the Republican Party under President Donald Trump, to invigorate black voters who were underwhelmed by Hillary Clinton and to reverse at least some losses among working-class white voters.
At Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books in the Germantown neighborhood of Northwest Philadelphia, black empowerment was on prominent display via titles like “White Fragility” and “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker.”
But when the talk turned to presidential politics, patrons universally said Biden was at or near the top of their list, in no small part because of his eight-year partnership with President Barack Obama.
“Just to be in the house and assisting Barack when he was in the house, he would already have my vote for that alone,” said Ciarra Walker, 30, a small-business owner.
Kerry Chester, 53, a network engineer working at his laptop, said he voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the 2016 Pennsylvania primary. But for 2020 he thinks it is so important to defeat Trump that Biden is preferable, even compared to the two top African American candidates, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California.
“I’m going to be completely honest: I think with the country going the way it is, I think we’re kind of safer on the Democratic side going with a white male right now,” he said.
Neither Chester nor other black voters interviewed said Biden’s record of championing anti-crime bills — as a Delaware senator in the 1980s and ’90s — that led to mass incarceration were impediments to their support.
“That was 20 years ago,” Chester said. “I can’t hold everything against him.” He added that compared with other candidates, “I trust him a lot more.”
Nasya Jenkins, 21, who works at a Boys and Girls Club and is an aspiring influencer on Instagram, said she did not penalize Biden for his treatment of Anita Hill in her 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. Biden called Hill recently to address some of her concerns, a conversation she said left her dissatisfied.
“I’m not really so caught up on what happened in the past,” Jenkins said. “We’re here now, with all the problems we have. What do you plan on doing to change that — period?”
Many factors went into Democrats’ loss to Trump in Pennsylvania by a mere 44,000 votes. One was that African American turnout fell about 130,000 votes shy of 2012, when Obama ran.
Jeffrey Cooper, 51, who was waiting for a bus at the Olney Transportation Center in North Philadelphia, suggested that the best nominee to close that gap would be Biden.
“Joe Biden has a connection with the African American people,” said Cooper, a computer programmer. “If Joe Biden comes here personally — walks among the people — if he does that a few times, he’ll get the votes of the people.”
The competition for votes is early, of course: Harris and Booker have yet to start aggressively campaigning in the state or courting black voters, and Booker may benefit in Philadelphia by pointing to his work in neighboring New Jersey. But for now, Rep. Dwight Evans, whose district in Philadelphia is majority African American, said of Biden, “I think of all the candidates — nothing against any of those other candidates — he is in the best position, and has the best skill set necessary to become the next president.”
Biden is targeting a swath of voters — including older, less educated and less liberal Democrats — who are often ignored by other candidates chasing younger voters more in keeping with the leftward energy in the party.
And to many Democrats, the worst-case scenario in a field of historic diversity would be the nomination of a septuagenarian white male moderate. If activists coalesce behind alternatives to Biden once primary voting gets underway next spring, the landscape could look much different than today.
Still, a Muhlenberg College poll of Pennsylvania this month showed that 45% of Democrats identified as moderate or conservative, and they strongly favored Biden over his closest rival, Sanders. Voters older than 50, a majority of registered Democrats, prefer Biden to Sanders by blowout margins. Overall, Biden led Sanders in the statewide poll of registered Democrats, 28% to 16%.
An hour north of Philadelphia, another key chapter in the story of Trump’s 2016 victory was written in Northampton County. A surge by white voters without college degrees helped Trump flip a county Obama easily won in 2012.
Robert Micklus, 73, retired from the iconic Lehigh Valley employers Bethlehem Steel and Mack Trucks, and his wife, Judy Micklus, 71, a retired forklift driver, are both registered Democrats who voted for Trump. They liked his tough talk on immigration. Both are unsure if they will choose him again in 2020. “Sometimes he acts like an idiot,” Judy Micklus said, adding with a sigh, “He’s trying.”
Like many other vestigial Democrats who strategists sometimes call “Trump triers,” they yearn for a less polarized country.
“Joe Biden,” Robert Micklus said, turning over the familiar name and resonance of a man born a couple of counties over in Scranton. “It’s possible,” he said of the chances a Biden nomination could lure him back to the Democratic fold. “My impression is he seems like an honest guy.”
Kevin Frantz, a 60-year-old retired firefighter, is already a committed Democrat. He said Biden would be the most likely nominee to defeat Trump.
“I like his sincerity, his personality, his experience,” he said. He added, “I think he cares.”
Mike Mikus, a political consultant in Pittsburgh who also advises unions, recalled that Biden was greeted warmly at last year’s Labor Day parade in the city. “It’s one of the largest Labor Day parades in the country,” he said. “They were all yelling, ‘Please run, Joe!’”
Sanders, too, is competing for white voters without a college degree. He recently defended his policies on “Medicare for All” and free public college, and his opposition to trade deals — which have pushed the party leftward — during a blitz of Midwest states.
“The reason we are visiting these states is pretty simple: Donald Trump won them two and a half years ago, and we’re not going to let him win them in 2020,” he told a crowd of thousands in Pittsburgh.
Trump has made clear he will fight hard to carry Pennsylvania again in 2020, and he remains broadly popular with working-class white voters who believe he generally reflects their interests and outlook better than many Democratic leaders.
But some Republicans already see the state as vulnerable: The GOP was battered in the 2018 midterms, with a net loss of three House seats, and party officials are concerned that Democrats will nominate a candidate who will have broader appeal than Clinton did in 2016.
In the Muhlenberg College poll, Biden’s greatest weakness appeared to be with younger voters. He was the choice of only 5% of Democrats under 30, compared with 40% for Sanders.
One of those voters is Ian Gallagher, a 24-year-old casino employee from Northampton. The argument that Biden’s center-left politics makes him more electable “doesn’t do it for me,” he said. “We need way more left than center-left. Center-left was Obama, and that didn’t work out.” He favors an Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders ticket, with Warren at the top.
The third potential leg of a Biden coalition is in the suburbs, specifically communities where college-educated voters who traditionally prefer Republicans have defected under Trump.
In a special election for a state Senate seat in the suburbs south of Pittsburgh on April 2, a Democrat flipped a district that Trump had won by 6 points.
“This is such a Republican area but everybody secretly voted Democratic,” said Barbara Zimmt, 62, a fundraiser and volunteer for the library in the suburb of Upper St. Clair.
Electability is the argument that consumes suburban Democrats.
It has led voters like Zimmt — even though she would love to see a woman as president — to land on Biden. “I guess it would be Biden at this point, because I think he can win,” she said.
“I think a lot of people are scared of the progressives,” said Sarah Tannenbaum, 35, a part-time accountant in Upper St. Clair. “Someone more moderate will have a better chance of defeating Trump.”
Beth Friedman, 38, a stay-at-home mother visiting the Upper St. Clair library with her children, voted for Trump in 2016, in part because her father is a former coal miner. Trump promised to bring back coal. But she said he does not deserve reelection because of “this whole wall thing” on the southwestern border.
Although she has not yet tuned into the 2020 race, Friedman seeks a centrist candidate. Could that be Biden? “I probably would vote for him,” she said.
There were dissenters from the argument that Biden is most electable. “I think he’s too old, has too much baggage and can’t win,” said Pat Flanigan, a community banker who lives in Upper St. Clair. He described the suburb as undergoing political transition. “A lot of the older rich Republicans are handing off to rich Democrats now.”
He favors Harris, who he said brings “a fresh voice and a new perspective.”
The name of Harris, a former attorney general of California, was mentioned as a top choice by many of the same people leaning toward Biden, including patrons of Uncle Bobbie’s in Philadelphia and suburbanites in Upper St. Clair. It was a reminder that the race is in its early stage, and coalitions could break apart and reconstitute multiple times around someone new.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.