As Joe Biden seems ready to officially announce his candidacy for the presidency, the question of his supposed special connection to the white working class is about to be put to the test to see if it is authentic or just another idea of conventional political wisdom that is going to be proven false, according to The Atlantic.
The question is deemed so important, because most observers say it is a demographic Democrats will need to have a chance to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020.
One believer in Biden's magic touch is Ohio's Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, who said, "Watching him campaign, it does strike me that he could campaign in all 88 Ohio counties and break through with people."
Another is David Axelrod, a top adviser for former President Barack Obama who helped bring Biden onto the ticket in 2008 and who insisted, "We strongly believed that he would be a help in the industrial Midwest, and we used him there a lot."
However, even Axelrod admitted it was "so hard to say" whether he indeed was a factor.
While many insist Biden was very effective for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign in industrial states, the Democrats lost all those key battlegrounds, and it is very difficult to determine if he should share the blame.
A Clinton operative said he does not think most surrogates translate, "so that's not any evidence that he's not effective when his name is on the ballot."
Although polls indicate Biden does resonate with the white working class, the only real test will be in going through the long campaign, with Axelrod saying, "The one thing polls can't do is project what the world's going to look like a year from now."
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