Joe Biden’s Rooseveltian Ambitions

AuthorRichard Johnson
DOI10.1177/20419058211066520
Date01 December 2021
Published date01 December 2021
28 POLITICAL INSIGHT DECEMBER 2021
A
week before the 2020
presidential election, Joe Biden
visited the tiny town of Warm
Springs in Georgia. The trip
was indicative of the Democrats’ ‘Sun Belt’
strategy. Biden’s party believed that its
candidate could expand the electoral map,
taking traditionally Republican states across
the southwest and southeast (Arizona,
Texas, and Georgia), while reversing Donald
Trump’s incursions into the ‘Rust Belt’ in
2016, when he won three traditionally
Democratic states (Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Pennsylvania).
Joe Biden’s
Rooseveltian
Ambitions
Joe Biden has promised to ‘build back b etter’ in the wake of the
pandemic. Could the US President realise Roosevelt’s ambitions to
remake America? Richard Johnson investigates.
Biden’s two-pronged strategy paid o.
Not only did he regain the three Rust Belt
states lost by Hillary Clinton four years
earlier, but he picked up two new Sun
Belt states – Arizona and Georgia – in very
narrow victories (by 10,457 and 11,779 votes
respectively). Biden’s winning coalition
consisted of strong African American
support, as well as support from middle-class
whites in the suburbs around the respective
capital cities of Phoenix and Atlanta.
Warm Springs, located closer to Alabama
than to Atlanta, did not t this prole. In
fact, its largely white, rural population voted
even more Republican in 2020 than in 2016,
with Trump’s vote climbing from 57 to 60
per cent. In the nal days of a campaign,
presidential candidates usually spend their
time addressing enormous rallies, exciting
the faithful to turn out to vote. Warm Springs
could hardly be described as a ‘vote rich’
area. The town has about 500 residents,
and only a couple dozen attended Biden’s
speech.
Roosevelt’s shadow
Biden had chosen Warm Springs not for
© David Branson / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight December 2021 BU.indd 28Political Insight December 2021 BU.indd 28 18/11/2021 14:2018/11/2021 14:20

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