A former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday said that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden performs stronger with white, working-class men than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser to Sanders’s 2020 bid, told Hill.TV that blue-collar men approve of Biden much more than they did of Clinton in her White House bid.
“We saw over and over in our polling that he performed better than her there, so he’s got to take advantage of that and get more of that,” he said.
Rocha, who is also the president and founder of Solidarity Strategies, said the former vice president has to even out his advantage among white, working-class men with his disadvantages among Latinos, people under 35 and some working-class, educated white women.
“But there’s time to make that up,” he said. “A lot of that is going in and having a conversation.”
The former adviser said he expects campaign consultants to be “super focused” on getting the support of President Trump voters, who had once voted for former President Obama, instead of younger and more diverse demographics.
“You can spend that money in black and brown neighborhoods and reaching out to the youth and get so much more of a turn on your dollar,” he said. “But a regular establishment consultant won’t do that because it’s outside the norm of how you’re really supposed to run a campaign.”
Sanders dropped out of the presidential race earlier this month, making Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee on the ticket in 2020.
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