Biden Visits Key Swing States as Mid-Time period Crunch Interval Begins | Information, Sports activities, Jobs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden set out on a campaign trail to empower Democrats as the crisis period before the midterm elections began, visiting swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to mark Labor Day with unionists, some of whom he hopes they will take effect for his party in November.

“The middle class built America. Everyone knows that” Biden told a workers gathering at a Milwaukee park lot. “But the unions built up the middle class.”

Later Monday he flew to Pittsburgh – returning to Pennsylvania for the third time in less than a week and just two days after his predecessor Donald Trump held his own rally in the state.

Trump spoke Saturday night at Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton, where Biden was born. The President made his own Wilkes-Barre trip last week to discuss increasing police funding, debunk the GOP’s criticism of the FBI following the raid on Trump’s Florida home, and to argue that new, bipartisan gun safety measures could help can help reduce violent crime.

Two days later, Biden went to Independence Hall in Philadelphia to give a prime-time speech in which he denounced “Extremism” from Trump’s strongest supporters. On Monday he will attend Labor Day celebrations in Milwaukee in another important swing state, Wisconsin, before heading to Pittsburgh for that city’s parade.

The unofficial start of fall, Labor Day, also traditionally heralds a politically busy season as campaigners scramble to excite voters ahead of Election Day on November 8. Then control of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as some of the top governors in the country will be decided.

Trump has endorsed candidates in key races across the country, and Biden warns that some Republicans now believe so strongly in Trumpism that they are willing to subvert core American values ​​to promote it. The President said Thursday the midterms will be a struggle “For the Soul of the Nation” the same slogan he used to win the 2020 election, and that “blind loyalty to a single leader and willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.”

Trump responded during his rally on Saturday that Biden is “an enemy of the state”

On Monday, Biden said “I’m not talking about all Republicans” but slammed “MAGA Republicans, the far right and Trumpies.” That referred to his Trump “Making America Great Again” Campaign cry and Biden highlighted incidents like last year’s mob attack on the US Capitol.

The crowd jeered as Biden chastised Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson for voting against a Democrat-backed measure designed to lower prescription drug prices.

Biden told the Milwaukee rally that many in the GOP had done so “chosen to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate, division.”

“But together we can and must choose a different way forward,” said Biden. “A future of unity and hope. we will choose to build a better America.”

The president also returned to another theme that was a centerpiece of his 2020 campaign, namely that unions are America’s economic engine.

“I come from the most corporate state of the world” said Biden, referring to his decades of representing pro-finance Delaware in the Senate. But he drew cheers, saying he wasn’t against business, but the country’s big companies should be “pay their fair share.”

Union endorsements helped Biden overcome disastrous early results in Iowa and New Hampshire to win the Democratic primary and eventually the White House. He’s continued to praise unions ever since — though many non-college-educated voters, many working-class, remain among Trump’s strongest supporters.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union, called on Biden to stand up for unions going into mid-term “critical” and said that the labor movement must “Mobilize to battlefields across the country to ensure working people show up.”

“We are very pleased that the President is speaking directly to workers about joining a union if given the opportunity.” said Henry. She added: “This president has signaled which side he is on. And he is on the side of working people. And that is extremely important.”

Biden, meanwhile, has a personal history with Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade, which is among the largest in the country. He attended Installment 2015 as Vice President and returned in 2018. Both times, Biden, now 79, faced questions about whether he would run for president in the upcoming election — which he decided against in 2016 before winning the White House in 2020.

This year, the oldest president in the nation’s history has faced speculation over whether he will seek a second term in 2024 – despite insisting that is his intention and pressure in recent weeks amid a spate of political and political successes has diminished somewhat for Biden and his party.

Still, both of the president’s constant battleground states that Biden visits Monday could provide important gauges of Democrat strength ahead of this November and 2024. With inflation still raging and presidential approval ratings remaining low, how much Biden can help his party in top races remains to be seen.

This was seen in full in Wisconsin, where Democratic Lt. gov. Mandela Barnes is seeking to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson but has been criticized by Johnson’s campaign for previously non-binding to appear in Milwaukee with Biden. In the state’s other top race, Tim Michels, a Trump-backed construction manager, is trying to deny Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a second term.

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