WASHINGTON _ Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. said the Democratic Party is not "showing enough respect" to white working-class men while rejecting the notion that racism prompted that bloc of voters to help elect Donald Trump.
Biden continued a week's worth of appearances during which he's alternately sounded like a 2020 White House hopeful and signaled he has no intention of running.
Biden said his party lost the White House, failed to capture the Senate and picked up fewer House seats than expected because it has lost its connection with a segment of Americans who are "scared to death" about a "loss of wealth" that occurred with the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.
But Biden, originally from working-class Scranton, Pa., and deployed to the Rust Belt often by Hillary Clinton's campaign, said that during his political career he never saw conflict in "being progressive" and appealing to working-class voters.
"Let's go back and speak to the people," Biden said.
His remarks at the NYU School of Law's Washington campus at times sounded like a blueprint for how he might appeal to a segment of the electorate that helped elect him and President Barack Obama twice but then turned out for Trump.
He recalled a speech he once gave in a working-class area. When he brought up equal pay for women, Biden said the men joined in loud applause, knowing their wives and daughters work hard, but get paid less.
Some have suggested white male working-class voters cast their ballots for Trump as a protest against Obama, the first black president. But Biden noted many had voted for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and 2012.
"So much for it all being about racism," Biden said to a silent room.
