Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said the Democratic Party is not “showing enough respect” to white working-class men while rejecting the notion that racism prompted that bloc of voters to help elect Donald Trump.

Biden continued a week’s worth of appearances during which he’s alternately sounded like a 2020 White House hopeful and signaled he has no intention of running.

[Biden is ‘Mr. President’ for an Afternoon in the Senate]

The vice president said his party lost the White House, failed to capture the Senate and picked up fewer House seats than expected because it has lost its connection with a segment of Americans who are “scared to death” about a “loss of wealth” that occurred with the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.

But Biden, originally from working-class Scranton, Pennsylvania, and deployed to the Rust Belt often by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, said that during his political career, he never saw conflict in “being progressive” and appealing to working-class voters.