Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Norfolk Tuesday to talk about the high cost of a college education and to bolster President Obama’s aggressive push to win over middle-class voters in a swing state considered critical to the president’s re-election effort.
At a Norfolk high school, Biden spoke at length about the challenges families face educating their children, echoing a populist message on which Obama has recently focused in other battleground states. Biden talked of his and Obama’s humble beginnings to strike a contrast with the president’s likely foe in the fall, Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, and to paint the administration as an ally of working families. “I always get criticized for being ‘Middle Class Joe,’ which I’m proud of. And I always talk about the middle class. It’s more than that,” Biden said. “When the middle class is not growing, everybody suffers. It is the backbone of America.”
