He looked like a candidate. He posed for selfies like a candidate. He even kissed a few babies and grandmothers like a candidate.
But after he had celebrated Labor Day on the sun-drenched streets of Pittsburgh, it still wasn’t clear whether Vice President Joe Biden was any closer to a decision on whether he would once more be a candidate for the White House.
“Biden for president,” one steelworker shouted from the crowd as Mr. Biden made a fiery post-parade speech denouncing inequality and the concentration of wealth.
“You have to talk to my wife about that; I’ve got to talk to my wife about that,” Mr. Biden said. But that was about as close as he got to a public acknowledgment of his deliberation over whether to join the Democratic field.
An affirmative answer would have pleased quite a few members of the crowds that lined Grant Street and the Boulevard of the Allies as Mr. Biden strode by. As he jogged back and forth from curb to curb, shaking hands and posing for photos, he heard shouts of “Run, Joe, run,” “Love you, Joe” and “I’ll vote for you, Joe.”
Rich Trumka, the AFL-CIO president, who walked with the vice president under the bright morning skies, said it was “a personal decision for the vice president and his family,” adding that he believed that the Scranton native genuinely hadn’t made up his mind. But pointing to the waves and outstretched hands that greeted him along the route, he said, “If you’re looking for energy, this is a good place to get energy.”
Mr. Biden arrived at the annual display of union solidarity just before the march kicked off. He doffed a sport coat and put on a United Steelworkers ball cap as he saluted the marchers with a brief speech, extolling the importance of labor and bemoaning the fact that wage gains have lagged behind the upsurge in productivity in recent decades.
“Something’s gone wrong, folks,” he said.
Referring to the shrinking percentage of the workforce represented by unions, he said, “As you’ve declined, the middle class has declined.”
“So there’s a simple correlation. We build labor, we build America. We build labor, we build the middle class.”
Then the vice president got down to the business — shaking hands, exchanging hugs, mugging for children along the route. Along the way, there were several homemade signs boosting the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the left-leaning insurgent who has been attracting big crowds across the country while surging in the polls in New Hampshire and Iowa. A new NBC/Marist poll showed him with a big lead over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the first primary state, while he's cutting into her previous advantage in the Hawkeye State.
Mr. Biden acknowledged the Sanders phenomenon in a later speech inside the United Steelworkers building. Amid a passage on the need to raise taxes on wealthy “trust fund babies,” he said, “And by the way, the press will say, ‘populist Biden got up and said today’ — what they’ll probably say — ‘competing with Bernie Sanders,’ who’s doing a hell of a job, by the way.”
The latter remarks amounted to a more expansive reprise of the themes of the vice president’s morning speech on Liberty Avenue — a denunciation of the rise in inequality in the nation and a warning that the increased concentration of wealth in fewer hands amounts to a threat to the nation’s economic future.
“The system is broken, guys, the system is broken, and it didn’t happen overnight,” he said.
“We’ve got to stand up on our hind legs, those of us who hold public office, and start to holler for you, holler more loudly than we have,” he said, in remarks that got louder and more passionate as the speech went on.
“[We’ve got to] take on these groups, be willing to take on the interest groups.”'
As it always does, the parade attracted a broad array of candidates and office holders. Katie McGinty, the Democratic Senate candidate who has been endorsed by the USW, walked up front not far from Mr. Biden. Retired Adm. Joe Sestak, her rival for the Democratic nomination, was farther back along with numerous candidates for this year’s statewide appellate court races.
The upward of 60,000 who marched in the parade might remember the day for their sunny stroll through Pittsburgh. Or, depending on events to come, they might end up telling friends for years that they were there for the kickoff of the Biden presidential campaign.
Politics editor James P. O'Toole: jotoole@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1562.
First Published: September 7, 2015, 2:11 p.m.
Updated: September 8, 2015, 4:04 a.m.
