President Joe Biden returned to his childhood hometown of Scranton on Tuesday to begin a three-day campaign campaign in Pennsylvania, while President Donald Trump spent the week in a New York City courtroom for his first criminal trial. Take advantage of the opportunity to work in battleground states during your time there.
The Democratic president plans to use Scranton, a working-class city of about 75,000 people, as a backdrop to advocate for higher taxes on the wealthy. At the same time, he will paint Trump, the Republican nominee and a billionaire himself, as an instrument of wealthy interests.
Click here to follow our WhatsApp channel
All of this is aimed at reframing the conversation around the economy, where many Americans are disgusted with their financial situation as stubborn inflation and rising interest rates continue despite low unemployment. There is.
Biden is scheduled to spend Tuesday night in Scranton before heading to Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning. He will then return to the White House and return to Pennsylvania on Thursday, this time for a visit to Philadelphia.
By the end of this week, Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris will have visited the state eight times this year, reflecting the state's importance to Biden's second-term hopes. .
“It's hard to envision a path for Biden to win the White House without Pennsylvania being involved,” said Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “No Democrat has ever been president.”
Scranton, the president's first stop, will be a confluence of the personal and political for Biden. He grew up in his three-story Colonial-era home in the Green Ridge neighborhood, but his father struggled to find a job and the future president was 10 years old when his family I moved to Delaware.
Although Delaware ultimately became the launching pad for Biden's political career, he often returned to Scranton, where he wrote his autobiography. Because of his frequent visits, he was sometimes referred to as Pennsylvania's third senator.
“In 2020, Biden described his presidential campaign as Scranton vs. Park Avenue,” and his re-election team is framing this year's campaign the same way.
There's Joe Biden, who sees the world from his kitchen table growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Donald Trump, who sees it from his country club in Mar-a-Lago, says campaign manager Michael Tyler. Told. Communication director.
Christopher Bolick, director of Muhlenberg College's Institute of Public Opinion, said Scranton is a mythical place in political culture and will be a test of Biden's political appeal.
“This is an area that, in theory, fits perfectly with the populist advances of the Republican Party in the Trump era,” Bolick said.
But Biden won the city and surrounding counties in 2020. Biden could win Pennsylvania again this year if he wins Scranton and similar areas and reduces Trump's margin of victory in rural areas.
Everything is on the edge. All we're talking about are small changes, Borick says.
Mr. Biden's tax pitch is part of a major effort to blunt Mr. Trump's populist appeal.
As president, Trump signed a series of tax cuts in 2017 that unfairly benefited the wealthy. Many of the tax cuts expire at the end of 2025, but Mr. Biden wants to keep the majority of them in order to fulfill his promise that people making less than $400,000 a year will pay no more taxes.
But he also wants to raise $4.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years by increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations. His platform includes a billionaire tax that would set a minimum tax rate of 25% on the incomes of America's wealthiest citizens.
Mr. Biden's visit to Pennsylvania coincides with the start of Mr. Trump's first criminal trial, presenting opportunities and challenges for the president's campaign.
President Trump is defending himself against criminal charges over his scheme to cover up an alleged affair between a porn actress and a Playboy model. Mr. Biden's team has quietly embraced the contrast between the former president, who was sequestered in the courts, and the current president, who is free to focus on the economic issues that matter most to voters.
But this conflict becomes less useful when President Trump captures the nation's attention with the first-ever criminal trial against a former president.
Biden campaign officials said they were not worried about the trial.
No matter where Donald Trump is, whether it's at Mar-a-Lago, in court, or anywhere else, he will be focused on himself, his toxic policies, and his campaign of revenge and retaliation. ''Tyler said. It's a continuation of the contrasts Americans have seen since this campaign began.
Sam DeMarco, Republican chairman of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, said the Democratic message is that the economy is good, but we're not smart enough to make it happen.
But DeMarco said that overall, the cost of living is higher today than when Joe Biden took office.
These are what the family is feeling, he said. And just because the president follows a script doesn't change that.
Trump last visited Pennsylvania on Saturday night in Schnecksville, where he described Biden as a crazed tyrant and blamed him for all of the country's problems, in addition to his own legal troubles. he accused.
President Trump said all of America knows that one person is truly responsible for this nightmare: Crooked Joe Biden.
He attacked Biden's tax plan, falsely claiming it would quadruple taxes.
President Trump also gushed at length about the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, calling it so vicious, so horrifying, and so beautiful in so many ways, that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee indicated that it is no longer supported.
