One day after his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden traveled to the Philadelphia area for a March 8 campaign event as he begins to visit key battleground states ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Biden, a former Benjamin Franklin Professor of Presidential Practice, spoke to a crowd at Strath Haven Middle School in Wallingford, Pa. about issues such as reproductive rights and the economy — topics he also addressed Thursday night. The rally was Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris's first stop in a combined half-dozen swing states within the coming week.
The event was also the first since former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley ended her presidential campaign — making 1968 Wharton graduate and former President Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
In contrast to his State of the Union address, Biden criticized Trump by name instead of using the term "my predecessor," as he frequently did during the address.
“Our freedoms really are on the ballot this November. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are trying to take away our freedoms,” Biden said. “That’s not an exaggeration.”
Biden, as well as First Lady Jill Biden, referenced Trump’s role in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and its impact on reproductive rights — saying that Trump entered office "determined to overturn Roe v. Wade."
“We have courts that are stripping away our most basic freedoms,” Jill Biden said. “We are the first generation in half a century to give our daughters a country with fewer rights than we had.”
Biden also stressed his work to promote job creation and bring the United States back to its economic position prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — work that he will continue emphasizing as he hopes to win a second term in the White House.
“Our economy’s the envy of the world. Fifteen million new jobs in just three years, that’s a record in American history. Unemployment at a 50-year low. Eight hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs and counting," Biden said. “As I said when I started, ‘Where is it written that we can’t be the manufacturing capital of the world again?’”
This visit marks the beginning of an increase in campaign events for Biden as his rematch with Trump is set in everything but name, with Pennsylvania expected to be a focal point of the contest.
Biden visited Georgia — a state that he narrowly won in 2020 — on Saturday in a dueling campaign event with Trump, and he will be making stops in notable swing states New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the upcoming week.
Biden and Trump are currently closely matched in general election forecasts, according to polls aggregated by FiveThirtyEight.
Trump’s legal trouble and ability to campaign may also impact the direction of the election season. In addition to facing four criminal trials, the United States Supreme Court is currently reviewing whether Trump is immune to prosecution for charges pertaining to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In the meantime, the two will battle it out on the campaign trail and try to win over enough Americans to secure another four years in the Oval Office.
“I believe in America. I believe in you, the American people. We just have to remember who in the hell we are,” Biden said during the rally. “We are the United States of America, and there’s nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.”
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