Biden Tries to Head Off Trump in Iowa With Pre-Rally Speech

(Bloomberg) -- Former Vice President Joe Biden will try to deflect some of the attention from President Donald’s Trump’s Thursday evening rally in Des Moines, Iowa, with a pre-rally speech that’s also intended to convince Iowa Democrats that he’s best suited to represent the party’s standard-bearer in November.

While both men are campaigning as the Senate’s impeachment trial of Trump is taking place, the speech is not expected to address the details of impeachment, a campaign official said on the condition of anonymity to preview the address. Rather, Biden will focus on the broader choice voters have Monday's caucuses, arguing that no progress can be made on the issues important to Democratic voters unless Trump is defeated.

“Health care. Climate. Guns. National Security. All these issues and more are on the ballot,” Biden plans to say, according to prepared remarks provided by his campaign “But something else is on the ballot. Something even more important. Character is on the ballot. America’s character.”

The former vice president will speak Thursday morning in Waukee, a Des Moines suburb, hours before Trump’s rally, which comes as he hopes to inspire a strong turnout in Monday’s Republican caucuses as a sign of the party’s strength in the state.

Biden will speak optimistically hopeful about what’s possible if Trump is defeated while reminding voters of the “dark, angry nation” that’s conveyed in the president’s tweets. It will amount to a closing argument for him, coming days before Iowans gather to caucus with polls showing no clear front-runner and likely setting the tone for his final four days of pre-caucus campaigning.

Much of Biden’s argument to Iowa Democrats is centered on polling and voters’ perceptions that he’s the candidate best suited to defeat Trump in key battleground states. On Thursday he will argue that he’s already faced Trump once and won — when he campaigned for candidates in 2018 in part on a defense of the Affordable Care Act — and can do so again this year.

“Trump and I have already gone one round with each other on health care,” he plans to say. “In 2018, I went to 24 states for 65 candidates. I took on Trump all over the country -- and beat him.”

“We should remember that this year,” he will continue. “I believe if we take the fight to Trump on Obamacare again, we’ll beat him again,” not only by winning the presidency but by also winning a majority in the Senate.

Biden’s speech will be paired with a 60-second ad called “Character,” in which a narrator says that quality is what counts in the Oval Office, whether it’s Barack Obama’s or Donald Trump’s. With a series of images of the candidate’s past, the commercial highlights his working-class background, his family tragedies, his work in the Obama administration and his countless miles on Amtrak trains. “Character matters. Maybe more here than anywhere,” the narration says in closing, an image of the Oval Office on the screen.

(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Harney at jharney2@bloomberg.net, Wendy Benjaminson

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