PHILADELPHIA — With his trademark dazzling smile, Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Philadelphia Wednesday night to make the case for Hillary Clinton, directing his well-honed Everyman rhetoric squarely at the constituency the Democratic presidential nominee most needs to win the White House in 2016: the white, male workers who are siding with Donald Trump.

“I’m not trying to be a wise guy here,” Biden said, warming up his blue-collar broadside against Trump as the crowd cheered. “Think about everything you learned as a child, no matter where you were raised. How can there be pleasure in saying ‘you’re fired?’ He’s trying to tell us he cares about the middle class. Give me a break. That’s a bunch of malarkey.”

“I know I’m called ‘Middle Class Joe,’” continued Biden, the blunt-spoken veep who famously took the train nearly every day between his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., since becoming a U.S. senator in 1972. “In Washington that’s not meant as a compliment. It means you’re not sophisticated. But I know why we’re strong, I know why we have held together. I know why we are united and it’s because there’s always been a growing middle class.”

“Hardworking people like us can do extraordinary things.”

Donald Trump “doesn’t have a clue about the middle class,” Biden roared. “Not a clue. Because folks when the middle class does well, the rich do very well and the poor have hope. They have a way up. He has no clue what makes America great.”

Throughout his speech, Biden argued the Democratic Party’s case to a group that is technically a majority, but increasingly self-identifies as a minority. The decline of the American middle class, caused by a confluence of globalization, changing trade rules, and the rise of technology, all increasingly evident since the late 70s, has paralyzed the fortunes of middle class men—forcing many to drop out of the workforce entirely. Increasingly, these frustrated white, male, blue-collar men make up the bulk of Donald Trump’s supporters, angry at the lack of opportunities that they once had, and no longer available to them.

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Clinton notched her victory in the primary race over Bernie Sanders in part by relying on her strong support among minorities—particularly African Americans—as well as women and older voters, while younger and whiter counties threw their support behind her Democratic rival. Now the former secretary of state is scrambling to connect with the many older, white, and working-class voters who may have supported the Democratic Party in the past, but have since become alienated by the party’s focus on racial and social justice issues like immigration and intersectionality. Biden, who walked onstage to the Rocky theme song “Eye of the Tiger,” seemed to offer a folksy authenticity that harkened back, in a way, to an older, whiter time.

“Hardworking people like us can do extraordinary things,” Biden intoned, sounding like the world’s best Cadillac ad. “We do not scare easily. We, never bow, we never bend, we never break. We endure, we overcome, and we always, always, always move forward.”