President Joe Biden often invokes his rust belt roots in moments of political convenience by referencing his hometown Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Other times he’s a bumbling career politician from the corporate tax haven that is called Delaware.
According to Reuters reporter Jarrett Renshaw, who recently spoke to dozens of people in Scranton, many in the city are hesitant to blindly support a Biden bid for a second White House term.
A highway and two streets in the city are named after the president, and there is a considerable amount of support for him there.
But Renshaw filed a report on Wednesday that shows many people there are outright concerned about Biden continuing to carry the mantle for the Democratic Party.
“Despite those strong ties, interviews with about two dozen Scranton voters show many harbor deep concerns about Biden running again,” Renshaw wrote.
He noted Biden is already the country’s oldest president at age 80, and will not be getting any younger. That is a fact not lost on voters in Scranton.
If Biden were to serve a full eight years, he would be 86 at the time of his retirement. He would probably head back to Delaware, and not to Scranton, where he left when he was 10 — in 1953.
One woman in Scranton who voted for Biden in 2020 said his age is an issue for her.
“I worry about his age and his health,” business owner Jenn Saunders told Renshaw. Saunders added she might vote for Biden if the 2024 race is a rematch of Biden versus former President Donald Trump. She equated such a decision as being “the lesser of two evils.”
One local who was described as an “activist” by Renshaw also referenced one of those roads named after Biden.
“I still think there should be more than street names that are changed and highways that are renamed for you,” 29-year-old Glyn Johns said.
Johns seemed to embody people frustrated by empty promises from the political elite when he said, “People that are on Biden Street are still struggling with their businesses.”
Ouch!
And while Biden’s age might be an issue for some in the city of Biden’s birth, one resident who outranks the president in age is also not thrilled by the prospect of having the president appear on a future ballot.
“The idea of a Biden-Trump rematch makes me cringe,” 83-year-old Donald Banks said.
Renshaw, whose wire service is the epitome of establishment media reporting, concluded, “Many Scranton residents say they might back Biden again in 2024, albeit without much enthusiasm. They expressed frustration at the Rust Belt town’s long economic slump and the apparent lack of options in 2024.”
Biden spent the first decade of his life in Scranton, so he has a claim to call the city his hometown.
But Scranton, like other cities in the rust belt, struggles with a lack of jobs and adequate education. Every four years, a Democrat comes along and tells people in the region they finally have the answer to all the problems.
The liar this time around just so happened to be a native son — whose Scranton roots have done less to bring relevancy to the city than the NBC sitcom “The Office.”
While anecdotal, an establishment reporter found waning support for a Democrat president in his own hometown.
This is evidence Biden presumably has even less support in places he doesn’t constantly invoke.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
