Joe Biden’s superfans think the rest of America has gone crazy

Andrea Russell is a fixture on Earp Street, the quiet strip of rowhouses in South Philadelphia where she has lived for 45 years. In the afternoons, neighbors come and go from her living room while her 16-year-old cat, George, sits above a television usually tuned to cable news.

Ms. Russell, a 77-year-old retired legal secretary, thinks President Biden would be a good fit. “He stopped by Earp Street,” she said. “I could just imagine going up to him and saying, ‘Hi, Joe.’ I see him here.” She identifies with him, she said, and admires his integrity and his track record. She also likes his eyes.

Her friend, Kathy Staller, also 77, said she wanted to vote for Biden as much as she wanted to vote for Barack Obama in 2008. “I’m excited,” she said. “I hope more people feel the same way I do.”

Ms. Russell and Ms. Staller are fervent, unqualified supporters of Mr. Biden — part of a small but committed group of Democratic voters who believe he is not just the party’s only option against Donald J. Trump, but in fact a major, transformative president who clearly deserves another four years in office.

They occupy a lonely position in American politics.

Mr. Biden, 81, has never generated the kind of excitement that Mr. Obama did, and he is not a candidate for the movement, unlike his likely 2024 rival, Mr. Trump, who is 77. Historically, he has been much more skilled at connecting one-on-one on the campaign trail than energizing the crowd with high rhetoric.

But his poll numbers have been particularly bad lately. A New York Times/Siena College poll released this weekend found that only 43 percent of respondents would vote for him if the election were held today, compared with 48 percent for Mr. Trump.

Forty-five percent of Democratic primary voters surveyed said they didn’t think he should be the party’s nominee — and only 23 percent of primary voters said they were excited about Biden being the Democratic nominee. That contrasts with nearly half of Republican primary voters who said they were excited about Trump’s candidacy.

The Biden campaign dismissed the latest numbers over the weekend, pointing to strong Democratic performances in recent special elections and Republican divisions and money problems.

Mr. Biden also has some voters who love him. They dismiss concerns about his age and bristle at the suggestion that someone else might meet the moment.

In interviews with nearly two dozen of these Democrats — many of them older, and most of them women — they sounded alternately beleaguered, bewildered and protective.

“I’m sorry Joe doesn’t know how much I love him, but I do love Joe,” said Constance Wynn, 73, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. “I don’t even know why people want to bother the guy, because the guy has things to do.

A president who ‘could use some support’

Mr. Biden’s superfans say he deserves more credit for a substantial record in his first term. Passing an infrastructure law. Cancel part of your student debt. Protect the environment with a drastic climate measure. Limiting the costs of insulin and other medications. Supporting unions and abortion rights. Placing the first black woman on the Supreme Court. He supports Ukraine and manages international crises with his deep foreign policy experience.

They praise his personal qualities and describe his devotion to his family, his regular church attendance and his down-to-earth, working-class attitude. They say they feel like they know him, and that the swing voters in their lives might identify with him, too.

And sometimes they worry about him.

Susan D. Wagner, a founder of Markers For Democracy, which encourages get-out-the-vote efforts by writing postcards, has started a project to send thank-you notes to Mr. Biden for his work — and show him he has support at a challenging moment.

“It seemed like he was packing his lumps and could use some support,” said Ms. Wagner, 66, who lives in Manhattan and is deeply involved in grassroots activism. “I wrote that nowadays, every now and then, someone needs a smiling face. And I put a little smiling face on it.”

‘He came out of retirement to save the country’

The president does have a following among some younger Democrats — both on social media and among those involved in local politics.

Dakota Galban, 28, has a day job in human resources at a construction company, but he is also chairman of the Davidson Democrats, a county party organization based in Nashville.

He likes Mr. Biden. “And I feel like I’m the only one,” he said, arguing that the news media had overwhelmingly focused on Mr. Biden’s lukewarm support. “Does anyone care that I exist?”

Mr. Galban, like many fans of Mr. Biden, acknowledges that the president is not a candidate who generates much enthusiasm. But they argue this is positive: Mr Biden’s strength lies not in his energy, they say, but in his management skills and his understated ability to get things done.

“He came out of retirement to save the country, to save our democracy, a fight for the soul of our nation – he didn’t have to run for president,” Mr. Galban said. “He made it his mission to win our country back from Donald Trump.”

But when Mr. Galban praises the president in committee meetings, his fellow Democrats chuckle. At home, his partner has kindly suggested he keep the life-size cutouts he has of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for safekeeping.

It’s a familiar dynamic for fans of the TV show “Parks and Recreation,” whose main character, Leslie Knope — played by Amy Poehler — obsessed with Mr. Biden, much to the confusion of her colleagues and loved ones. (Asked to describe her ideal man, Ms. Knope says, “He has the brains of George Clooney and the body of Joe Biden.”)

Julie Platt, 34, works for a lobbying firm in Philadelphia and is a board member in the city’s Second Ward. Describing herself as a progressive “ambassador” for Mr. Biden, she says her enthusiasm for him has only grown, even as her friends who supported Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 primaries cast the president as insufficiently progressive, not exciting enough and consider too old. .

“I don’t see it as a choice between two bad candidates,” she said, referring to a rematch between Biden and Trump. “I couldn’t be more honored to vote for him.”

Two years ago, Ms. Platt began keeping a list of Mr. Biden’s achievements in the Notes app on her phone. “He’s done so much,” she said. “It drives me crazy that people don’t see it.”

‘Everyone I talk to loves Joe Biden’

Unsurprisingly, some of Biden’s biggest supporters are in Philadelphia politics. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Jill Biden is a sports fanatic from Philadelphia. The president has visited the city regularly since taking office.

Jim Donnelly, the leader of the 58th Ward, in the city’s conservative northeast, said he had at least seven Biden signs on his front lawn. He got into a fight with his neighbors who vandalized or stole them.

Aside from police, firefighters and his hairdresser, he said, “Everyone I talk to loves Joe Biden.” Among his reasons for supporting Mr. Biden, he cited the president’s well-known kindness in training conductors, his foreign policy experience and his track record on job creation.

Some of Biden’s biggest supporters have loudly contradicted his opponents. After demonstrators called for a ceasefire in Gaza interrupted Mr. Biden’s speech in January, a woman at a South Carolina church exclaimed, “You are an understanding person. They don’t realize that. You are a good man.”

That was Tomi Greene, 74, of Charleston. She said she first met Mr. Biden at a town hall meeting sometime around 2018, and had since become friends with Jill Biden.

“He is the right person to get us where we need to be,” Ms. Greene said. “He’s very compassionate and he’s smart. He relates to people.”

Of his opponents, she said, “I wish they could see and feel what I feel.”

Ms. Russell, the Biden financier on Earp Street in Philadelphia, said she would change only one thing about Mr. Biden — the lock of white hair on the back of his neck, which sometimes extends over the collar of his suit.

“It’s driving me crazy,” she said. “Just cut it off!”