“I didn’t know he said that,” he responded. “And now I’m not as upset as others.” I asked him what he thought of Trump’s tweets that morning, which claimed that, although “Dues Sucking” union leaders might be for Biden, the rank and file were with the President. A lifelong Democrat, Clarke voted for Trump in 2016. “Yes, yes, we’re all firemen for Biden,” he said, and laughed. Brendan Clarke, wearing one of the ubiquitous yellow “Fire Fighters for Biden” T-shirts, was yukking it up with some of his fellow union members. Others were in attendance not so much for Biden but out of loyalty to the International Association of Fire Fighters, which had endorsed him earlier on Monday. And it’s going to take a white male with experience. In fact, I’d go way left, but we’ve got to pick the person who can get Trump out of there. But they had made their decision to endorse Biden more out of pragmatism than runaway enthusiasm. Of course, the guy who’s in there now just works two hours a day, so . . .”Īnother pair of friends, Patricia Jakiel and Marsha Williams, who both work in mental-health care, wore homemade “Joe 2020” stickers. Hearing him speak and everything, he is a little slower than we’d want-just being honest about that. But any unwelcome similarities to a Trump rally in the Rust Belt pretty much ended there-not just because these folks were mostly pleased to chat with those reporters, rather than holler at them, but because they were, to one degree or another, skeptical of the candidate they’d come to see.Īlice Elash, a teacher, who came to the rally with her friend Ruth Close, proclaimed, “Blue collar for Joe!” But she also had her doubts: “I still have an open mind about who my candidate will be.” Close added, “One thing we are concerned about is his age. The folks were predominantly white, to be sure, and it was the kind of crowd that makes reporters look fussily dressed. If men outnumbered women, it wasn’t by much, and the crowd included plenty of chatty millennials. At Joe Biden’s kickoff rally, in Pittsburgh on Monday, the long line that stretched around the Teamsters’ union hall, snaking downhill past newly desirable row houses in the trendy Lawrenceville neighborhood, was not as homogenous as many might have imagined.
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