Calling himself “middle-class Joe” again, former Vice President Biden campaigned for Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Ralph Northam in Fairfax County — the third-richest county in the whole country. He championed that candidate and the proverbial American worker in Reston, where the median family income exceeds six figures and the average home price hovers just below half a million dollars.
“The thing that bothers me the most about the other team,” Biden said of Northam’s GOP opponent, Ed Gillespie, who is campaigning down South with current Vice President Mike Pence in the poorer, more rural part of the state, is that “they so significantly sell short the capacity of the American people.”
Building the economy of the future requires a Democratic victory. If the Virginia governor’s mansion stays blue, Biden promised, the state will thrive. Factory workers will find high-paying tech jobs. Coal miners will cram into cubicles. All will learn computer code.
A microcosm of that promised economy might as well be on display at Refraction. “A collaborative working community” during the week, the office-leasing company hosted the Biden and Northam event on the weekend. Something like $300 a month buys a temporary work space full of synergy, yuppies, and impractical furniture. It comes with an old-school arcade, conference rooms, and a fully stocked kitchen complete with espresso, beer, and wine.
Before Biden showed up, a cameraman from a local station wanders over to the bar to ask for “a mimosa or a Bloody Mary.” He was joking, but the building has probably seen plenty of day-drinking. It’s a millennial paradise. And Northam expects nothing less for all of Virginia. The Democrat has proposed a government program for everything.
His G3 program stands for getting skilled, getting a job, and giving back. That Northam plan would pay for any Virginian who wants workforce training or an associate degree in what the Democrat calls “new collar jobs.” In exchange for the free community college, the graduate gives back a year of government service or goes to work in “an economically depressed area.”
Northam’s government also promises to create a job board to connect employers to willing employees and offer a free preschool program for the kids while parents are at work. All of this can work, Biden assured the crowd Saturday. Virginia and all its D.C. suburbs just need to be a bit more like Detroit.
Toward the end of the Obama administration, the vice president took an exhaustive look at what would become the jobs of the future and what they would require. With enough intervention, he concluded, anything’s possible, even in Michigan’s motor city. When Detroit was getting back on its feet, the city needed municipal employees to work the electrical grid, regulate the sewers, and run the government.
“And so Ralph,” Biden explained, turning to Northam, “they literally went into the ‘hood. Into the neighborhood — the ‘hood.” The city found five dozen candidates, “turned out to be all women. They were all women of color, not by design, it just happened to be,” Biden recounts. “They went through this program learning how to program.” After the training all had municipal jobs. Biden says some made more than six figures.
Right now, Virginia seems open to that pitch. Most polls have Northam up over Gillespie by about seven points with about three weeks before Election Day. Both candidates have made the economy their focus. The Republican complains about the lack of growth, while the Democrat plugs the low 3.8 percent unemployment rate. Whichever candidate they choose, the contrast is obvious.
Gillespie wants generic conservative things like tax cuts. Northam wants more government, meaning, as Biden explained, a stronger middle class. “Give people hope. Give people hope that we are not falling down into this sort of know-nothing pit,” the vice president said concluding his remarks. “And secondly, to generate programs now that can provide opportunity and save a whole heck of a lot of people.”
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
