Joe Biden: Blue-Collar Americans Voting Republican as Democrats Ignore Them

During a speech this week in Virginia, Biden made the admission that the nation’s mostly populist, working and lower-middle-class electorate prefers the GOP’s new wave of national populism over Democrats’ increasing embrace of upper-middle-class and wealthy values.

“Folks, too many people have been left behind in the past. Too many people, like my dad, too many people were treated like they were invisible,” Biden said:

Isn’t it kind of interesting why all of a sudden … blue-collar workers — all the guys I grew up with in Claymont and Scranton — they vote Republican. Not a joke. What happened? [Emphasis added]

“I think a lot of it is because they don’t think we care,” Biden continued. “We’re not paying attention. It’s a little bit like what happened when I ran the first time as a 29-year-old kid for the Senate in 1972 and got elected. We had what I called ‘limousine liberals.’ A lot of people wanted to do an awful lot but they just forgot about my neighborhood, forgot about the neighborhood I grew up in.”