Joe Biden gets away with yelling at voters, and may even benefit from it
- Once again, former Vice President Joe Biden got caught on camera getting into it with a voter, and the clip is causing a stir.
- Biden has been known to lose his cool with voters occasionally during his political career.
- While other candidates may suffer from such blow-ups, Biden has largely been immune to them.
- In the Detroit exchange centering around gun control, Biden could even benefit from it among a group he can improve with: Women likely to vote in the Democratic primary.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is known for having intimate and often emotional interactions with voters on the rope line after events.
But on Tuesday, Biden got visibly angry when confronted by a construction worker critical of the candidate's positions on gun control.
Biden, 77, has occasionally lost his cool with voters on the trail over the course of his three presidential runs, but often avoids paying the price other candidates may face.
During a tour of a Fiat Chrysler plant under construction in the Motor City on Tuesday morning, one of the workers told Biden "You are actively trying to take away our Second Amendment rights."
"You're full of s---," Biden responded.
As an aide tried to thank the workers and move Biden along, the candidate gave a resounding "shush" and continued the confrontation.
"I support the Second Amendment," Biden told the worker. "Just like right now, if you yell 'fire' [in a crowded room], that's not free speech.
"I have a shotgun, I have a 20-gauge, 12-gauge, my sons hunt - guess what?" Biden continued. " ... I'm not taking your gun away at all. You need 100 rounds in your gun?"
"No," the man replied before the two engaged in crosstalk difficult to discern.
Biden has had a few tussles on the campaign trail with voters before in this cycle and in his 1988 and 2008 bids.
He has been caught on camera shaking an environmental activist's lapels and telling him to "vote for someone else." He caught himself in the middle of making remarks about an Iowa voter's weight after challenging to him a pushup contest, asking him to take an IQ test and calling him "a damn liar."
In 1987, Biden had an even more notable IQ test moment in an argument with a voter in Claremont, N.H.
"I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do," Biden told Frank Fahey at the outset of a rant during the campaign stop.
While Biden later dropped out amid a plagiarism scandal in that campaign, Fahey went on to endorse Biden for his 2020 run.
"I like his honesty," Fahey told New Hampshire's local TV station, WMUR, last May.
With Biden's most recent heated voter exchange centering around guns, the viral dustup could even boost his standing among suburban women who hold gun control as a top issue.
The former VP's support among liberal voters and men is strong, but he is slightly behind with women who say they're likely to vote in the Democratic primary.
Looking at the four most recent national polls conducted by Insider through February and March, Biden has a slight disadvantage among voting Democrats who were women. Biden is seen as a satisfactory nominee by 56.3% of men who knew of him but just 48.6% of women, an eight percentage point split.
With Democratic women generally polling stronger on plans for stricter gun control measures, Biden laying into the construction worker could end up being a bonus.
Biden's preexisting relationship with voters and personal brand may help him bounce back from interactions that could harm other candidates, particularly women.
Jon Favreau, a former Obama speechwriter and host of Pod Save America who recently conducted a series of focus groups with constituencies key to Democrats' efforts to win back the White House, told MSNBC's Katy Tur Tuesday afternoon that Biden's tell-it-like-it-is approach generally works for him.
"I actually think Joe Biden taking to them like a normal person would talk to them, at worst it's a wash, and at best it might help him," Favreau said.