Biden Hammers Trump on Economy on Amtrak Trip Across Rust Belt
Joe Biden said President Donald Trump’s behavior at the debate proved he “looks down” at everyday Americans.
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden was right at home on Wednesday – in the comfort of his beloved Amtrak.
Proclaiming to have accumulated more than 2.1 million Amtrak miles during his years commuting from Delaware to Washington as a senator, Biden returned to America’s railroad for a seven-city tour through eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania and took his economic message right to heart of Trump county.
“A lot of White working class Democrats thought we forgot them and didn’t pay attention,” Biden said after the trip, adding that he believed he could win them back because he understands “their sense of being left behind.”
While those voters might not think President Donald Trump and his policies have helped them, Biden said, “They’re not sure that there’s the old Democratic Party back and looking at them, listening to them. And so I think it’s important.”
The Biden campaign chartered the train to bring the Democratic nominee on a seven-hour journey through the Rust Belt, home to many of the White working class voters the vice president wants to win back from Trump, especially in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
It also gave Biden, who thrives on contact with voters, the opportunity to charm people who came to see him as well as local officials and the press on a lively day of retail politicking – an experience that has eluded him since March at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
The campaign also seized on the old-fashioned whistle-stop tour to hammer Trump’s conduct at Tuesday night’s debate – which the former vice president called embarrassing.
Most of the trip brought Biden to areas that Trump flipped in 2016 - and in Pennsylvania, a state the president won by fewer than 45,000 votes, Biden is looking to close the margins in rural areas as much as possible.
“Well I think some we can win back, others it’s about cutting the margin,” he told reporters in Johnstown about the areas in the state Trump won by more than 60%. “Even if we just cut the margin, it makes a gigantic difference.”
So Biden’s message was unmistakably clear. He insisted that he, rather than the incumbent, would be a better steward of the economy and oversee a fair and equitable recovery from the pandemic. The economy remains the one issue polls show voters narrowly favor Trump.
Biden charged that Trump broke his promises to the “forgotten man” and only cared about the wealthy and well-connected. A Biden administration, the former vice president promised, would focus on the middle class and ensure the wealthy paid their fair share. To underscore that point, Biden highlighted endorsements from a factory worker who lost his job at the General Motors Co. plant in Lordstown after it closed and union leaders who vouched for his understanding of living paycheck to paycheck.
Biden focused largely on his economic agenda but the timing of the trip -- a day after the combative and chaotic first presidential debate -- made its drama impossible to ignore.
Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden and moderator Chris Wallace during the debate in Cleveland on Tuesday and spewed falsehoods and personal attacks against Biden and his family. Biden struck back, at times, telling the president to “shut up” and calling him a “clown,” but Trump just kept talking over the other men on the stage.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the president of the United States conducted himself the way he did — I think it was just a national embarrassment,” Biden said during a stop in Alliance, Ohio.
He added that Trump had performed as he “expected him to,” and that the president’s conduct “reinforced for me why I got into this race in the first place.” In particular, Biden assailed Trump for not disavowing White supremacists. Asked at the debate whether he would condemn the Proud Boys, a far-right group, Trump said: “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by.” That led some members of the group to acknowledge the message -- “Standing by, sir.”
Biden on Wednesday delivered a different message to the group: “Cease and desist.”
But Biden also used the debate as an opportunity to tie Trump’s outbursts into his larger argument that the race is about different economic outlooks. Drawing on his middle-class upbringing in Pennsylvania and Delaware, Biden criticized Trump for not caring about most Americans, especially regarding the coronavirus and its economic fallout.
“What I saw last night was all about him,” he said. “He didn’t speak to you or your concerns or even the American people once.”
Representative Conor Lamb, a Democrat who represents the suburbs of Pittsburgh, said Biden’s trip through western Pennsylvania offered voters the opportunity to hear directly from him, something that was difficult at times during Tuesday’s debate.
“It shows respect to these people and shows that he really means that he wants to be a leader for everyone and not just the sort of Democratic base in the big cities,” Lamb said in an interview aboard the train. “But secondly it’s a chance to break through the distractions and the noise.”
The trip also displayed the stark contrast in campaigning between the two presidential candidates. While Trump continues to hold rallies with thousands of people in airport hangars around the country, Biden’s team has closely hewed to public health guidelines, keeping his events small.
But, Wednesday’s swing still offered the interactions with voters Biden craves on the trail. Upon disembarking the train in Alliance, Biden offered a young girl in a blue dress his sport coat after she said she was cold. Later in Latrobe, he had a FaceTime exchange with Joanne Rogers, the widow of the late children’s show host Fred Rogers.
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