Joe Biden, the blue collar, Catholic, foreign policy expert from Delaware is going to help Barack Obama in places like Pennsylvania’s 12th District. It’s hardcore United Mine Worker and United Steelworker country, the “Cradle of the American Steel Industry,” according to the Almanac of American Politics. It was settled by the irascible Scots-Irish that Jim Webb talks about in “Born Fighting” and was the site of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
It’s also represented by Democrat John Murtha, the fiery chairman of the House Defense Committee, who, like Biden, is a Catholic from a blue collar background. He’s also a Marine (I don’t think there such a thing as “former Marines” or “former presidents), and about 15% of his constituents are veterans.
I don’t know if Murtha likes Biden, but their biographies are awfully similar. What I do know is that Murtha doesn’t like Obama and that Obama got drubbed in his district in the primaries. As Nick Beudrot noted after the Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton “ended up winning reaching the 70% margin in PA-12,” her best margin in the state.
Biden will likely be dispatched to areas like Penn.-12, where Reagan Democrats have been identifying with more Reagan and less Democrats in recent years. John Kerry barely won the district with 51% in 2004, and Al Gore only took 55% in 2000.
If I was David Plouffe, I would send Biden on this tour:
- Scranton, Pa. — Biden’s birthplace.
- Johnstown, Pa. — Murtha’s home.
- Youngtown, Ohio — the town whose mills “built the tanks and bombs that won this country’s wars“
- Sandusky, Ohio — home of Callahan Auto Parts.
- Flint, Mich. — 80,000 residents worked for GM there in 1970s; 8,000 work for GM there today.’
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