President Biden is visiting Pennsylvania for the third time in less than a week, and he is returning just two days after his predecessor, Donald Trump, held a rally there.
This highlights the significance of the battleground state to both parties as Labor Day ushers in a nine-week countdown to the pivotal midterm elections.
Near Scranton, where Mr. Biden was born, in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday night, Trump gave a speech.
The president travelled to Wilkes-Barre last week on his own own to raise police funding, refute GOP criticism of the FBI after the raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home, and promote new, bipartisan gun safety laws as a means of reducing violent crime.
Two days later, Mr. Biden travelled to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall for a prime-time speech criticising the “extremism” of Trump’s most ardent followers.
Referencing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan and citing examples like last year’s mob assault on the U.S. Capitol, he said, “MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy.”
He visited Labor Day celebrations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday before moving on to Pittsburgh for a Labor Day procession. Wisconsin is another important swing state.
He criticised “MAGA Republicans” and their resistance to legislation in the Democratic-led Congress once again in Wisconsin.
He said that “the radical MAGA Republicans in Congress have decided to go backwards, full of fury, violence, hatred, and division.” But by working together, we can and must choose a different route.
Labor Day, which marks the unofficial beginning of autumn, also marks the beginning of election season, when campaigns are frantically trying to pique voter interest before November 8 election day.
Control of the House and Senate, as well as several of the most important governorships in the nation, will be determined at that time.
Biden is expressing concern that some Republicans may now be so committed to Trumpism that they are prepared to compromise fundamental American ideals in order to advance it. Trump has backed candidates in significant elections around the nation.
Invoking the campaign slogan he used to win the 2020 election, the president declared on Thursday that the midterm elections will be a fight “for the soul of the nation” and that “blind loyalty to a single leader, and a willingness to engage in political violence, is fatal to democracy.”
At his rally on Saturday, Trump claimed that Biden’s speech in Philadelphia was “the most vile, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.”
The previous president said, “He is an enemy of the state.”
The president will revisit a different issue on Monday that was a major part of his 2020 campaign: that labour unions enriched the middle class, which in turn helped to build and enhance contemporary American society.
Mr. Biden overcame terrible early results in Iowa and New Hampshire with the support of important unions, winning the Democratic primary and ultimately the White House.
Since then, he has been praising labour unions, despite the fact that many people without college degrees and many members of the working class continue to make up the majority of Trump’s followers.
Ahead of the midterm elections, Mr. Biden’s support for unions was deemed “critical” by Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 2 million members.
Ms. Henry also stated that the labour movement must “mobilise in battlegrounds across the country to ensure that working people turn out.”
Henry said, “We’re particularly pleased about the president speaking directly to workers about whether he would join a union given the chance.”
Added her: “This president has made his allegiance clear. He supports the rights of workers. And it is really important.”
In contrast, Mr. Biden has a personal connection to Pittsburgh’s Labor Day celebration, one of the biggest in the country.
As vice president, he went to the 2015 gathering and came back in 2018.
Both times, 79-year-old Biden was asked whether he would run for president in the forthcoming elections; he decided against it in 2016 and went on to win the White House in 2020.
The oldest president in American history has faced questions about whether he would run for reelection in 2024, but he has indicated that is his aim.
The pressure has lessened in recent weeks as a result of a series of policy and political victories for Biden and his party.
However, the two consistently competitive states for the presidency that Biden is visiting on Monday might provide important indicators of the Democratic Party’s strength in November and in 2024.
We’ll have to wait and see how much Mr. Biden can aid his party in competitive contests when inflation continues to soar and the president’s popularity numbers remain dismal.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is vying to replace Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, but Johnson’s team criticised Barnes for being vague in her prior statements about joining Biden in Milwaukee. Tim Michels, a construction entrepreneur backed by Trump, is aiming to prevent Democratic Governor Tony Evers from being re-elected in the state’s other key contest. Evers declared his intention to accompany Mr. Biden on Monday.
Pennsylvania voters will choose a new governor, with state attorney general John Shapiro competing against Doug Mastriano, a fellow Trump supporter, and a new senator.
Democratic Lt. Governor John Fetterman is running against Trump’s supporter Mehmet Oz, a well-known heart specialist. Both Shapiro and Fetterman intended to go to the Pittsburgh parade on Monday.
The outcomes of the gubernatorial contests in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania might determine which party controls the Senate the next year, and the outcomes of each race could have an impact on the presidential election of 2024.
Given that some Trump-aligned candidates have distributed false information about rampant fraud that did not take place during the 2020 election, the stakes are very high, increasing concerns about what would happen if a candidate they don’t like wins the next presidential election.