Katie Glueck and Jonathan Martin

With less than three months to go before voting begins in the 2020 primary, and on the eve of the fifth presidential primary debate, Biden faces significant challenges in the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, a cash crunch and several Democrats threatening his standing with centrist voters.

But his greatest compensating advantage right now is notably durable support from a multiracial coalition of working-class voters who feel a kinship with the former vice president and believe he is the Democrats’ strongest general election prospect.

At fundraisers and on campaign stops, Biden is warning his party against overlooking voters who were once a core Democratic constituency but had found some elements of President Donald Trump’s message compelling in 2016. His campaign believes the Democratic Party risks narrowing its Electoral College path in 2020, and hurting its standing on Capitol Hill, if candidates do not appeal directly to these more moderate voters in battleground states in the Midwest and Sun Belt.

And both explicitly and more subtly, Biden is portraying his chief rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and another top candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, as liberals who are overly focused on expensive and theoretical government overhauls.

“Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood, the last thing I liked is people telling my family and me what we should know, what we should believe,” Biden said as he criticized Warren’s advocacy style, speaking at a recent CNN town hall in Iowa. “As if somehow we weren’t informed, that we — just because we didn’t have money we weren’t knowledgeable. I resent that.”

Warren, who is running as a corruption-battling economic populist, surpassed Biden in a number of polls this fall, and she is often the favorite of white, college-educated voters — but Biden still leads comfortably with high school-educated Democrats in many surveys. That dynamic has stymied Warren’s growth after her early-autumn surge, and it has sometimes benefited Sanders, who also has strong connections to blue-collar voters.

In dozens of interviews, from parades and union rallies to black churches and political picnics, working-class Democrats who support Biden explained their views in practical terms: they know and trust the Scranton native from his long tenure as a Delaware senator and as Barack Obama’s vice president, they find his incremental policy proposals realistic, and they think he can win.

“I liked what him and Barack did together,” said Doris Stuekerjuergen, who worked at a fireplace factory and attended an October event with Biden in this small rural community of West Point. “Hopefully he leads us back to where we were. The world we live in now is pretty scary.”

The Democrat who forges a cross-racial coalition of working-class voters almost always wins the party’s presidential nomination. It is a path that was disrupted only in 2008 when Obama was able to achieve what few of his predecessors had — fuse the support of upscale whites with black Democrats.

But surveys in this race indicate a return to the long-standing tradition in Democratic primaries of voters splitting along class lines, and illuminate a key slice of Biden’s base.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll of Democratic primary voters in general election battleground states found that among white voters without a four-year degree, Biden had double the support — 30% — of Warren and Sanders. But the numbers for Biden and Warren were nearly reversed among white college graduates. In Iowa, where Biden is struggling, he was still the strong favorite of voters who did not go past high school in another recent New York Times/Siena College poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers.

And in South Carolina, where the Democratic electorate is dominated by black voters and where Biden is strong across the board, a Monmouth University poll from late last month showed him receiving the support of 38% of voters without college degrees, well ahead of his rivals.

“He is the only candidate right now that I feel can beat Trump,” said Ivie Barnwell, who stood in the shade selling her handmade sweetgrass baskets in Galivants Ferry, South Carolina. Around her, T-shirt-clad activists and a host of presidential candidates descended on the town for a political festival earlier this fall. “This Trump man has got to go,” she said.

For some voters, Biden appeals because there are strategic assumptions at work: Many black working-class Democrats believe that white America will only support a well-known white male, such as Biden, while a number of working-class white Democrats also believe he is the most acceptable nominee. Some voters cited the misogyny and racism that female candidates and candidates of color have experienced in previous races.

And then there is the crucial fact that many of these voters — whether because of his down-to-earth persona, the tragedies he has endured or a combination of both — simply have warm feelings for the man they often address as Joe when they see him.

“He relates well to blue-collar voters and to non-college voters,” Jeff Link, a veteran Iowa Democratic strategist, said. “Those Scranton roots kind of come through.”

Despite this advantage, some Democrats are skeptical that Biden, who turns 77 Wednesday, can sustain this support.

Since he entered the race in April, Biden’s poll numbers have dipped, he has suffered from a series of self-inflicted errors that raised concerns about his age, and he has absorbed ferocious attacks from Democrats and Republicans alike — including baseless attacks on his family from Trump.

Ty Livesay, operations manager at a mall in Conway, South Carolina, said he connected with Biden — “I’m a common Joe; he’s a common Joe” — but acknowledged having doubts about Biden’s strength in the primary. “Is Joe going to be able to handle it?” he asked.

Others harbor no such reservations.

“I don’t care about his personal opinion, gaffes or comments he makes — what means most to me is what type of man he is,” said Pete Garrett, who works at an auto parts production company and wore an Obama campaign pin to a Biden appearance in Birmingham, Alabama.

For all of his advantages with blue-collar voters in the Democratic primary, Biden so far does not appear to significantly cut into Trump’s base of white working-class voters. And he is not the only Democratic candidate perceived as electable. Early polls, which are parsed by some committed voters but are not predictive at this stage, show several Democrats beating Trump in head-to-head matchups.

Still, Biden’s rivals recognize the advantage he has built up with blue-collar voters and are seeking their own inroads with them.

Even as she has unveiled a lengthy roster of detailed policy plans that thrill college-educated liberals, Warren, for example, also highlights her modest Oklahoma roots, her brothers’ military service and her own time as a teacher.

Sanders also enjoys a blue-collar following, polls show. While the most politically muscular element of the Democratic working class — the labor unions — has largely remained on the sideline, after feeling regret over their early intervention on behalf of Hillary Clinton in 2016, Sanders has recently notched some endorsements. They include the country’s biggest nurses’ union and a teachers’ union in Los Angeles. Sen. Kamala Harris, who is struggling in the polls, was endorsed by the United Farm Workers.

Sanders in particular is sitting on voters Biden could use, especially if Warren continues to make gains with college-educated Democrats — though she increasingly faces competition for those voters from Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana.

One union that does support Biden is the International Association of Fire Fighters. And that union’s president, Harold Schaitberger, said Democrats should be wary of again losing some of the voters who sided with Trump in 2016.

Schaitberger said these voters want to feel “that they are connected with someone who wants to be president of the United States but isn’t, if you will, looking down on them or preaching down to them.”

Asked whether he meant those remarks as a swipe at any of Biden’s opponents, Schaitberger, himself a high-school educated voter, demurred. But he noted that “there are some candidates that, you know, speak in a very high intellectual, professorial” fashion.

Warren is a former Harvard professor.

Biden has also scolded Democrats over their drift from bread-and-butter issues like wages, pensions and union rights.

“I bet some of you voted for Donald Trump because we stopped talking to you,” he said at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, over the summer, adding, “We sort of stopped talking to our base: high school-educated Americans.”

Biden’s research has indicated that such voters respond particularly well when reminded of Biden’s middle-class youth as a car dealer’s son and that he had lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident and his elder son to brain cancer. He made his biography central to his initial advertising, linking his support for the Affordable Care Act to his searing family story.

Steve Buchmeier, a 54-year-old farmer from Kellogg, Iowa, has seen Biden’s campaign ads, and he was one of the Obama-Trump voters in attendance at Biden’s campaign stop in Newton.

“The U.S. isn’t ready for a girl,” he said as he reflected on the 2016 election, stressing that his own decisions are not influenced by gender.

This time around, Buchmeier said, he found Biden’s experience as vice president impressive, though he was not committed to switching back to the Democrats in 2020.

But, he said, “this guy is on the top of my list if I do.”

This article originally appeared in

They're Blue Collar, and They Like That Biden Is an Average Joe

WEST POINT, Iowa — They are white and nonwhite alike, prefer Facebook over Twitter, if they are on social media at all, and can be hard to find at Democratic campaign events dominated by activists from the professional class. But these blue-collar voters could go a long way toward determining who captures the Democratic presidential nomination — and Joe Biden is racing to press his advantage with that constituency.

It wasn’t just Biden’s halting answers that worried some of them. They thought he was showing his age — that, at 76, he appeared slow off the mark, uncertain about how to counterpunch as he allowed Harris to land clean hits without interruption.

Within minutes, aides sent talking points to supporters titled “regarding the civil rights exchange,” and had information on his record ready for a late-night conference call. But his top advisers and other Democrats knew his unsteady response — ending with his listless comment that his “time is up” — would exacerbate questions about whether Biden, a veteran debater, was nimble enough to handle intense campaign moments or to beat President Donald Trump on a debate stage next year.

“It felt like he was a step slow,” said Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who was a top Iowa staffer for Biden during his 1988 presidential campaign and is so far neutral this cycle. “If Joe comes back strong in the next few debates, I think it’ll be fine. But I do think he looked kind of old in this debate.”

As Biden prepares for the debate this Wednesday night, which will include a rematch with Harris, he and his advisers are grappling with how to make sure he doesn’t appear so shaky, cognizant that a repeat performance could do lasting damage to his campaign and erode his advantage in the polls. Several advisers emphasized that Biden is in excellent health, and said he will be more prepared to defend his record and more willing to draw contrasts with his opponents than he was at the June debate.

But interviews recently with more than 50 Democratic voters and party officials across four states, as well as with political strategists and some of Biden’s own donors, showed significant unease about Biden’s ability to be a reliably crisp and effective messenger against Trump.

While the president’s own style of communicating is often contentious — his bellicose tweets, his misstatement of facts, his demeaning language about minorities and immigrants — he has a largely united Republican Party behind him. Biden is still trying to prove himself to Democrats as their best hope in 2020; many of those interviewed were most concerned about his agility and linked it to the sensitive subject of Biden’s age.

Some voters couched their misgivings in euphemisms about wanting “new ideas” or “new people.” Some expressed fears of appearing ageist — a reflection of the goodwill Biden enjoys with much of the Democratic rank-and-file. Others referenced their own lives: If they have “slowed down” upon reaching a certain age, the thinking goes, Biden must have as well. And a few people were blunt.

“Seventy-plus is too old,” said John Hampel, 68, of West Des Moines, Iowa, who said he would like to support a centrist candidate. Biden would fit that ideological bill, but Hampel, citing his own age, continued, “I think he should pass the torch.”

If elected, Biden would become the oldest president in history at his inauguration, at 78, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who was 73 when he began his second term. Among the other Democrats running for president, Sens. Bernie Sanders is 77 and Elizabeth Warren is 70.

A Pew Research Center survey from May found that only 3% of Democrats and Democratic leaners said it was best for a president to be in their 70s; 47% preferred someone in their 50s.

Trump, 73, who would be the oldest president ever if he wins a second term, has faced questions about his own physical and mental fitness for years. He has handed his critics unceasing fodder, whether because of his stated aversion to exercise or his penchant for impulsive, offensive and often-invented observations on all manner of topics.

Despite all that, Trump is seeking to turn Biden’s age into an issue. He has sniped publicly that Biden is not the political athlete he once was, while being even harsher in private. Meeting with a group of union officials in the West Wing this year, the president appealed for their support in part by tapping on his head and saying, “Biden is losing it,” according to a participant in the meeting who disclosed the president’s comment on condition of anonymity.

His unsubstantiated attacks on Biden, and more muffled disquiet from some Democratic activists, infuriate Biden’s friends and advisers and are contrary to the view of Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor.

“Vice President Biden is in excellent physical condition,” said O’Connor, a retired Army colonel, who served as a White House physician and was named physician to the vice president in 2009. “He is more than capable of handling the rigors of the campaign and the office for which he is running.”

Biden aides grumble there are far fewer questions about the age of his fellow candidates in their 70s, noting that Biden is in strong physical shape for his age.

“The person he’s going to be running against is about the same age,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., a Biden campaign co-chairman, in reference to Trump. He also noted that his candidate is in better shape and, alluding to the president’s erratic behavior, is “of sound mind.”

Or as John Morgan, a Florida donor who hosted the former vice president at his home for a fundraiser this spring, put it: “Can you see Donald Trump jogging?”

Biden’s allies describe him as a fitness fanatic and reasonably disciplined eater who also enjoys ice cream and cheeseburgers. As vice president, he favored staples like yogurt and juice, salads with protein and for dinner, pasta or fish, said John Flynn, who served as military aide, personal aide and as a senior adviser to the then-vice president over the course of about five years. Flynn added that he sometimes briefed Biden at the gym.

“I work out every morning,” Biden said earlier this month. “I usually work on the Peloton bike, and I lift.”

His aides insist that Biden has more energy than they do. At a South Carolina fish fry last month, allies note, he outlasted rivals in greeting voters late into the night. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has also vouched for Biden’s vigor, saying on CBS in April, “if you travel with Joe Biden, you won’t think he’s too old.”

Flynn relayed a story about a high-level, 48-hour trip to Iraq and Rome in 2016.

“I think the only person that didn’t sleep on that flight, besides the flight crew, was him,” Flynn said. Speaking of Biden’s stamina more broadly, he continued, “Even though he had been up for as long as he had, he still was the sharpest.”

On the campaign trail, Biden sometimes recalls an encounter with a heckler who called him “Sleepy Joe” — a Trump nickname for him — during a July 4 parade in Independence, Iowa.

But as Biden notes in the retelling, when he asked the individual if he wanted to jog along with him on a steamy summer morning, the heckler demurred.

Amy Wright, an Independence resident, told him as he stopped to greet on her the curb, “If you can run, you’re not Sleepy Joe.”

But for all of the energy Biden can exude, he is also prone to uneven performances. He is often warm and empathetic toward voters — many of whom emphasized that with age comes experience — and was quick and humorous at a news conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire earlier this month.

Yet he also meanders and sometimes speaks so softly at events that it can be difficult for attendees to hear. After Biden tripped over a few lines while addressing Planned Parenthood activists last month in Columbia, South Carolina, one audience member, Marda Kornhaber, tried to be delicate.

“He didn’t come off, I’m trying not to let the age thing ...” Kornhaber, a human resources executive from Charlotte, North Carolina, said before stopping herself. “But he did seem like he bumbled a few times. That leaves me a little sad.”

He also relays stories about his decades in public life that can seem off-key at best and deeply controversial at worst.

Some of Biden’s allies argue that he has long struggled to be succinct.

“He’s never been good at synthesizing his thoughts into 30-second or 60-second answers,” said former Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, who is 75. “He was just as awkward in ’88.”

Where he shines, Rendell said, is in interactions with voters.

“If you’re a good politician, it reenergizes you,” Rendell said. “If you care about people, it reenergizes you. Joe’s a good politician and he cares about people.”

As Biden prepares for the next debate, scores of his supporters have offered the same unsolicited advice to his aides: borrow from the playbook of another septuagenarian candidate, Reagan, according to campaign officials.

Some of these would-be wordsmiths have suggested invoking a version of Reagan’s “there you go again” from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter a few months before Reagan’s 70th birthday. Others have urged Biden to defuse questions about his age by employing Reagan’s rejoinder about not holding Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience” against him, a line that helped Reagan bounce back from a lackluster first debate in 1984.

It is unclear if the former vice president’s aides want him to say anything that will draw more attention to his age.

But Biden often says that it is fair to raise the issue — and he has sought to make light of it, even joking about challenging Trump to a push-up contest.

“I find it fascinating, they talk about pass the torch, it’s the time,” Biden said at a fundraiser in California, where he spoke in broad strokes about the Democratic field. “And then they talk about me being naive. I thought at least they’d give me credit that if I was that old I wasn’t naive.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/joe-biden-age.html" id="40a9e023-46fe-36a3-a47e-a11e7cc051ca">The New York Times</a>.

'A Step Slow': Democrats Fret As Biden's Age Becomes Issue

As aides and allies watched Joe Biden’s first debate performance last month, their initial optimism about his abilities turned to alarm as Sen. Kamala Harris laced into him over race and busing.

Within minutes, aides sent talking points to supporters entitled “regarding the civil rights exchange,” and had information on his record ready for a late-night conference call. But his top advisers and other Democrats knew his unsteady response — ending with his listless comment that his “time is up” — would exacerbate questions about whether Biden, a veteran debater, was nimble enough to handle intense campaign moments or to beat President Donald Trump on a debate stage next year.

As Biden prepares for the next debate Wednesday night, which will include a rematch with Harris, he and his advisers are grappling with how to make sure he doesn’t appear so shaky, cognizant that a repeat performance could do lasting damage to his campaign and erode his advantage in the polls. Several advisers emphasized that Biden is in excellent health, and said he will be more prepared to defend his record and more willing to draw contrasts with his opponents than he was at the June debate.

But interviews recently with more than 50 Democratic voters and party officials across four states, as well as with political strategists and some of Biden’s own donors, revealed significant unease about Biden’s ability to be a reliably crisp and effective messenger against Trump.

While the president’s own style of communicating is often controversial — his bellicose tweets, his misstatement of facts, his demeaning language about minorities and immigrants — he has a largely united Republican Party behind him. Biden is still trying to prove himself to Democrats as their best hope in 2020. Many of those interviewed were most concerned about his agility and linked it to the sensitive subject of Biden’s age.

Some voters couched their misgivings in euphemisms about wanting “new ideas” or “new people.” Some expressed fears of appearing “ageist” — a reflection of the goodwill Biden enjoys with much of the Democratic rank-and-file. Others referenced their own lives: If they have “slowed down” upon reaching a certain age, the thinking goes, Biden must have as well. And a few people were blunt.

Trump, who himself would be the oldest president ever if he wins a second term, has faced questions about his own physical and mental fitness for years. He has handed his critics unceasing fodder, whether because of his stated aversion to exercise or his penchant for impulsive, offensive and often-invented observations on all manner of topics.

Despite all that, Trump is seeking to turn Biden’s age into an issue. He has sniped publicly that Biden is not the political athlete he once was, while being even harsher in private. Meeting with a group of union officials in the West Wing earlier this year, the president appealed for their support in part by tapping on his head and saying, “Biden is losing it,” according to a participant in the meeting who disclosed the president’s comment on condition of anonymity.

Why Biden's Age Worries Some Democratic Allies and Voters

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Katie Glueck and Jonathan Martin

Articles written by the author

They're Blue Collar, and They Like That Biden Is an Average Joe

'A Step Slow': Democrats Fret As Biden's Age Becomes Issue

Why Biden's Age Worries Some Democratic Allies and Voters