President Biden made his third trip to Pennsylvania in less than a week and returned just two days after his predecessor, Donald Trump, staged his rally there.
Trump spoke Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton, where Mr. Biden was born. The president made his Wilkes-Barre trip last week to discuss increasing funding for police, decry GOP criticism of the FBI after the raid on Trump’s Florida estate, and argue that new, bipartisan gun safety measures can help reduce violent crime.
Two days after that, Mr. Biden went to Independence Hall in Philadelphia for a prime-time address denouncing the “extremism” of Trump’s fiercest supporters.
On Monday, he is attending Labor Day festivities in Milwaukee, in another key swing state, Wisconsin, before traveling to Pittsburgh for that city’s parade.
The White House says Biden will celebrate the dignity of American workers. The unofficial start of fall, Labor Day also traditionally kicks off political crunch time, with campaigns scrambling to excite voters ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8. That’s when control of the House and Senate, as well as some of the country’s top governorships, will be decided.
Trump has endorsed candidates in key races around the country and Biden is warning that some Republicans now believe so strongly in Trumpism that they are willing to undermine core American values to promote it.
Trump said during his Saturday rally that Biden’s Philadelphia appearance featured the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president. “He’s an enemy of the state,” the former president said.
Endorsements from key unions helped Mr. Biden overcome disastrous early finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire to win the Democratic primary, and eventually the White House. He has since continued to praise labor unions — even though many voters without college degrees, many working class, remain among Trump’s strongest bloc of supporters.
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, has a personal history with Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade, which is among the nation’s largest. He attended the 2015 installment as vice president and returned in 2018. Both times, Biden, now 79, faced questions about whether he’d run for president in upcoming elections — which he opted against in 2016 before winning the White House in 2020.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is trying to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson but drew criticism from Johnson’s campaign for being noncommittal beforehand about appearing with Biden in Milwaukee.
Pennsylvania voters are choosing a new governor, with state Attorney General John Shapiro facing another Trump-endorsed Republican, Doug Mastriano, and a new senator. That race is between Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Trump-backed celebrity heart physician Mehmet Oz. Shapiro and Fetterman both planned to attend Monday’s Pittsburgh parade.
The Pennsylvania and Wisconsin races could decide which party controls the Senate next year, while the winner of each governorship may influence results in 2024’s presidential election.
