'Come on, Joe. Get out of the basement': Democrat voter explains why he may not vote for Biden

Indiana voter says the former vice president 'needs to start seeing people, or Trump is just going to run all over him'

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Jeffrey Matenaer remembers a time not too long ago when he would get his mail every day in the mid-afternoon.

“It used to be like clock work,” he recalls in a recent interview with The Independent.

But then something changed. He can’t put his finger on exactly what happened, or when things went wrong — though he knows it was within the last few years. All of a sudden, he began asking himself: “What the hell is going on?”

“Now I get my mail sometimes at eight or nine’ o’clock at night,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to the mailman about it yet, because I know he’s busy and has got to get his route finished, but what is happening? Some days I don’t get mail at all.”

While he’s not sure how, Matenaer has a sneaking suspicion that President Donald Trump and his allies in Washington have something to do with it.

(Photo courtesy Jeffrey Mantenaer (Photo courtesy Jeffrey Mantenaer)

The 58-year-old Indiana voter and US Army veteran shared his views on the upcoming elections, just as Democratic leaders were on Capitol Hill calling for the president’s appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to reverse operational changes to the Postal Office, which they warned was leading to a “dramatic increase in delayed and undelivered mail impacting mail delivery times and quality of service.”

Matenaer, who identifies as a Democrat but has supported past Republicans presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, fears Trump is working to destroy the Post Office just in time for the 2020 election, when millions of Americans across the country are expected to mail-in ballots to avoid in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“If the American people do it right, send in their ballots on time, even then, I just have a fear that Trump and his postmaster general is going to do something slick,” he says. “I think Trump and this guy have got something going on. It might get a little bit tough.”

Matenaer was in the Army until 2004, and has held a few jobs since then, serving as a police officer for six years, working at Amazon in integrity staffing solutions and now acting as a full-time babysitter to his 11-year-old daughter, who stopped going into school in March when the state began implementing Covid-19 restrictions.

The spare time has allowed Matanaer to focus more on the campaign trail — as well as the incumbent president’s behavior in office.

“My wife says I need to shut the TV off, when she comes home and hears me yelling at the TV, she says: ‘It’s not going to respond.’ But everything this guy is saying is false,” he says, referring to the president. “President Trump just thinks he can do whatever he wants. If you listen to the guy talk, I mean just yesterday he — wait a minute, I wrote it all down,”

I hear a flurry of papers and a light humming noise. “I’ve got it all here,” Matanaer mutters. “There we go.”

He then repeats the president’s claims from his last coronavirus briefing: “He says Covid-19 is going to go away, well yeah, maybe when our generation is gone!”

Matenaer works down his lengthy list of outright fallacies and misleading comments the president has made in just the last 48 hours, for what seems to be five minutes or longer. But his biggest fear seems to be the president’s attacks on mail-in voting: it’s what he keeps going back to throughout the interview.

“The Postmaster General is a big Trump donor — I see a real big problem right there — especially when mail-in voting starts,” he says. “It’s going to be a train wreck.”

Matenaer is absolutely sure of one thing: he will not be voting for Trump in the 2020 elections. Whether he casts a ballot for former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is another question.

“I’m at about 70 per cent,” he says about whether he plans to cast a ballot for Biden. “If I see Joe get out and do more, or he does something really good for the Democrats, I’ll make sure I put out my vote for him.”

However, Matenaer says Biden “has his problems too.”

He then raises the recent announcement that Biden would not be headed to Milwaukee to partake in an in-person Democratic National Convention and receive the party’s nomination for the presidency, instead reportedly planning to attend a virtual event.

The former vice president declined to attend the event “because he’s afraid of Covid-19,” Matenaer suggests, noting that’s an “understandable” concern for the 77-year-old politician.

Still, this voter wants to see the candidate in action.

Check out more of The Independent’s series, Polarized: Voices From Across America

“The guy has got to get out of the basement, or he’s going to lose,” Matenaer says. “Biden not going to Milwaukee, that made me mad.”

He adds: “I’d like to see more of him on TV. Trump constantly goes on the networks to attack Biden. I don’t see him attacking back. He calls him ‘Sleepy Joe.’ Well, what’s Biden’s nickname for Trump?”

Matenaer also says he’ll be more willing to vote for Biden depending on whether he manages to choose a highly-qualified candidate to serve as his vice president. Among Matenaer’s list of top picks for the Democratic VP slot include California Senator Kamala Harris and former National Security adviser Susan Rice.

“Kamala seems like someone who isn’t going to back down,” he says. “If someone is going to say something about her, she won’t back down. She didn’t back down from Biden during the debates. That’s what they’re going to need: someone who voices their opinion. She voices her opinion.”

More than anything, though, Matenaer really just wants to see Biden talk to everyday Americans about what he’s going to do as president — rather than having others do it for him.

“He’s got all these people working for him to try and make him president of the United States, and I feel that he’s not doing his part,” he says. “I don’t know, I’d be out there on the trail at least talking to some people. He needs to get out of the basement. He needs to start seeing people, or Trump is just going to run all over him.”