Biden touts middle class in campaign kickoff
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PITTSBURGH – Drawing a raucous, overflow crowd, Joe Biden kicked off his presidential campaign Monday afternoon in an appropriate location: an organized labor hall.
The Democratic candidate touted labor, touted middle-class values and tramped on President Donald Trump during a fiery 30-minute speech at the Teamsters Local 249 hall in Lawrenceville.
“We need a president who will work for all Americans,” said the former vice president and a Scranton native. “Everyone knows who Donald Trump is. We have to make them know who we are. We need change . . . most importantly, truth over lies.”
Biden officially announced his candidacy Thursday, the 20th Democrat to do so. He has appeared at numerous Labor Day parades in the city, and said he selected Pittsburgh as his starting point because “Pittsburgh and Scranton represent the working-class communities that are the backbone of this country.”
“If we’re going to beat down Donald Trump in 2020, it will have to happen here. We’re going to have to do that in Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania, where (Democrats) have struggled a bit recently. I’ve seen us coming back, but we need your support.”
Biden chose not to run for the White House in 2016. He is a political veteran, a senator from Delaware for 36 years and vice president to Barack Obama for eight. He is 76, four years older than Trump, and if elected, he will be – at 77 – the oldest president to be inaugurated.
On Monday, he attracted a massive audience along Butler Street, estimated at 600 – inside and outside. The hall where he spoke was jammed with standing supporters who, before Biden appeared and following each of his impassioned passages, bellowed: “We want Joe! We want Joe!”
Near the beginning of his speech, Biden said he had three overriding objectives: 1) restore the soul of the nation; 2) rebuild the backbone of the nation; and 3) unify the nation.
He wants a sturdy middle class. “Being middle class,” he said, “is not a number, it’s a value set. But our middle class is hurting. Fifty-three percent of Americans don’t think their children will be better off than they are. Has that ever happened before?”
Near the beginning of his speech, he said: “I make no apologies. I am a union man. It takes a strong union to have a strong middle class.”
Biden criticized companies for suppressing wages, union-busting and “squeezing the life out of workers.” He said employees should be treated with dignity.
“People should never be treated as a means to an end, but instead be the end itself.”
One of the loudest ovations Biden received was when he proclaimed, “We’re well past the time when the national minimum (wage) should be above $15 an hour.”
He devoted a share of vitriol for Trump, blasting the president’s position on the Affordable Care Act, for tax cuts for the wealthy and for not being a unifying leader.
“Donald Trump is the only president not to represent the whole country,” Biden said in closing. “This is the United States of America, and we’re capable of anything.”