In San Francisco there’s a high-end boutique called “Unionmade”. There you will find expensive work jackets and overalls, lit by bare bulbs and displayed on unvarnished metal shelves. The aesthetic could not convey its message any more clearly: buy these clothes, and access a bygone era of authenticity and American craftsmanship. But it’s a lie – the clothes on offer are largely not union-made. “The unfortunate reality is that there are not many unions left in the garment industry and so the name was cultivated as a signifier of well-made and aesthetically timeless goods,” explains a spokesperson.

As the industrial working class has faded, its afterimage has become available for appropriation in commerce, in culture and in politics. Such appropriation need not entail commitment to the workers’ movement. Everyone from Levi’s jeans to Donald Trump has made this move – and now, Joe Biden, the would-be candidate of labor.

Biden is the Unionmade of politicians. The former vice-president is taking great care to dress up his new candidacy in a blue-collar costume; as Andrew Epstein puts it, he is an “aesthetic populist”. His kickoff rally was on Monday in a union hall in Pittsburgh, where the president of the United Steelworkers of America promised his members would be present “wearing their USW gear”.

The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), whose president has long been close to Biden, has endorsed him. Bob Casey, the Pennsylvania senator of the old New Deal variety (anti-abortion, pro-labor), chimes in that Biden has an “electric” connection with “old-school union guys”.

Related: Whoa there Democrats – Joe Biden isn’t as electable as you think | Richard Wolffe

When he was considering running in 2016, CNN observed, “Joe Biden’s relationship with America’s working men and women is at the core of his political soul.” Yet the idea that Biden is some kind of working-class hero has no discernible substance. Like the myth on the right that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an empty-headed idiot, it’s pure projection – though one that he’s at great pains to encourage.

To be sure, Biden is a nominally pro-union liberal. Like any Democrat, he won’t cross a picket line. He loves to talk in union halls. He’s always saying things like, “There’s an old saying – all men are created equal but then a few became firefighters,” and “The best place for me to be my whole career is surrounded by organized labor. And I know how to say ‘union’.”

The notional blue-collar appeal of Joe from hard-luck Scranton was widely understood to be one of the main reasons that Barack Obama – famously the effete “wine track” candidate – selected him as a running mate. But where does this appeal come from? Biden’s not a scion of wealth, but he grew up in the middle class: his father was a used-car salesman, not a factory worker.

At no point in his career has Biden proven willing to take the slightest political risk on behalf of workers. His appearances in union halls occur when he needs something from labor. On the other hand, when Biden went to vacation in the Hamptons during the 2011 Verizon strike, workers in the area sought him out “just to possibly get a show of support, a thumb’s-up, a head nod, anything” – to no avail. That same year in Wisconsin, labor leaders specifically asked Biden to come to rally their resistance to the brutal, ultimately successful attack by Scott Walker; Biden declined.