‘Middle-Class Joe’ rakes in millions POLITICO 3/18/19:
He’s repeatedly referred to himself as “Middle-Class Joe” on the campaign trail and in speaking engagements as he publicly mulls whether to run for president. ... “I know I’m called Middle-Class Joe. It’s not meant to be a compliment. It means I’m not sophisticated. But I know what made this country what it is: ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Biden said in Kentucky last year, a refrain he’s used repeatedly for years, including when he floated a potential presidential run in 2017.
5 things Biden pick says about Obama POLITICO 8/23/08:
4. He’s more worried about Lunchbox Joe than Bubba. Obama was not persuaded by arguments that Democrats for the past 60 years have won the presidency only when they've had a Southerner on the ticket. He seems confident he can put a few states in the Old Confederacy in play by stoking African-American turnout. Perhaps. But he also is calculating that his more urgent concern is working-class whites, especially those in the industrial Midwest. Hillary Rodham Clinton clobbered him in these areas — and white men remain very skeptical of him, if you believe the polls (and his people do). At the public unveiling of the ticket Saturday at Springfield, Ill., Obama called Biden a “scrappy kid from Scranton.”
