Since Joe Biden announced his presidential run last Thursday, pundits have called him an instant frontrunner, convincing themselves that the former vice president is the lone candidate who can emerge from the infinitely deep pool of Democratic hopefuls in a battle against Donald Trump. Buoying Biden’s electability, they say, is his appeal to the working class that secured Donald Trump’s victory in Democrat-leaning swing states in 2016. Biden is, in words inferred but not explicitly stated, the Democrats’ latest great white hope in the fight to moor a sinking white nationalist ship to some harbor of respectability unsullied by Trump’s controversies, bigoted policies, and boorish leadership.

Yet the media narrative about Biden tends to focus exclusively on working-class whites, downplaying the multiracial, working-class coalition needed to advance progressive policies and unjustifiably hinging Democrats’ success on a man whose record mostly illustrates that he is the least deserving of the coronation.

Assumptions about Biden’s candidacy — that winning over working-class Trump voters is the primary key to victory; that the working class does not consist of nonwhites who would be averse to Biden’s history of racist rhetoric and corporate shilling; and that Biden could appeal to the working class enough to defeat Donald Trump — fall apart with even marginal scrutiny.