PITTSBURGH: The calls of encouragement could be heard on nearly every block as Vice-President Joe Biden jogged his way through the Labour Day parade here.
There were chants from the steelworkers’ union marching behind him (“Run, Joe, run!”), shouts from onlookers (“Hope you run, Joe!”) and quiet pleas when Biden stopped long enough for a handshake, smile or selfie (“I’m sorry for your loss and I look forward to your win,” said one man, referring to the recent death of Biden’s elder son, Beau).
But all the appeals went unanswered. The vice-president, who has indicated he will decide later this month about whether to run for president, repeatedly responded with a word of thanks but no hint of what he may do.
Asked about the show of support, Biden at one point during the parade said, “It’s hope,” and later, alluding to his Scranton roots, said: “It’s home; it’s Pennsylvania.”
It was not until after he concluded the 1 1/2-mile (2.4 km) route through downtown Pittsburgh on a steamy morning that he got to the heart of the matter. At the end of his second speech of the day to union members, a steelworker yelled out: “Run for president!”
“I got to talk to my wife about that,” Biden responded to the group, which was gathered in the lobby of their national United Steelworkers headquarters here.
The vice-president is still wrestling with whether he and his family possess “the emotional energy,” as he put it last week, to pursue a bid. His candid self-assessment has led some in his party to conclude he is ultimately unlikely to enter the race. But for much of Monday, he seemed revived and happy to bask in the enthusiastic reception.
Biden, who first sought elected office 45 years ago, is well acquainted with the political rites of a Labour Day rally and parade. Wearing a steelworkers union baseball cap as he addressed a few hundred members before the march, the vice- president recalled labour’s role in his own political life, hailed unions as having built the middle class (“that’s not an exaggeration”) and took his blue blazer off at the moment he was getting worked up over tax benefits for “trust fund babies.”
“You’re the only ones who have the power to keep the barbarians in the gate, man,” Biden said, concluding his remarks with a pound to the lectern and a shouted refrain: “Organise, organise, organise.”
But immediately after he finished his brief speech just a few feet in front of the David L. Lawrence Convention Centre — named after this city’s onetime mayor and Democratic boss who became known as the “maker of presidents” for his backstage influence in national politics — it became apparent that this would be different from other Labour Day gatherings Biden has attended over the years.
It was at this point the “Run, Joe, run” chants first began. They would pick up again later in the parade, and were not the only indications of a Democratic presidential campaign in flux.
As he dashed in gray trousers and a white polo shirt through this Democratic bastion, Biden repeatedly encountered vocal supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who has emerged as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most significant challenger in a primary season that was once thought to be little more than a formality for her.
“Feel the Bern, Joe!” one Sanders backer bellowed from the sidewalk.
When he approached the Sanders backers, Biden offered only praise for the senator, calling him “a friend.”
And in his remarks after the parade, the vice-president brought up the Vermont senator’s name without prompting, saying Sanders was “doing a hell of a job.” Biden made no mention of Clinton.
The former first lady also spent Labour Day campaigning, visiting a picnic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; a chicken fry just over the border in Hampton, Illinois; and another picnic behind a baseball stadium in Burlington, Iowa. She collected the endorsement of Representative Dave Loebsack, the lone Democrat in Iowa’s congressional delegation, who endorsed Obama when Clinton ran for president in 2008.
“I know, standing here before you, that one of my principal jobs as your president will be to defend the right to organise and bargain collectively on behalf of hard-working Americans,” Clinton said in Hampton, speaking outdoors with the Mississippi River behind her.
At the picnic in Cedar Rapids, Carleta Cherry, 60, said she would support Clinton, unless Biden decided to run and selected Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as his running mate. In that case, she said, “I’m jumping ship.”
