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By Reuters 
11h ago
Trevor hunnicutt
Former US President Barack Obama will make his first election campaign appearance Wednesday for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who is locked in a tight race with President Donald Trump in crucial states 13 days before the US elections. November 3.
Obama, who served eight years in office with Biden as his vice president, will urge supporters to vote early for Biden and other Democratic candidates in the general election at an open-air rally in Pennsylvania’s largest city, Philadelphia, an attendee of ex. said the president.
Trump will head to North Carolina, another crucial battlefield state where polls show a close race, to hold a rally with supporters Wednesday night.
Obama’s rare public appearance, a frequent target of Trump’s attacks and still one of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars nearly four years after leaving the White House, comes at a critical moment.
Biden and Trump meet in their second and final debate Thursday night, giving the Republican a chance to change the trajectory of a career that Biden is leading in national polls.
Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, warned staff and her supporters that she sees a much closer race in the 17 states the campaign sees as battlegrounds than national polls suggest showing a consistent lead for Biden.
“As President Obama has said, this is a hands-on time and he looks forward to hitting the road in person, socially distanced, as we are only two weeks away from the most important election of our lives,” said the assistant Obama, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Biden sees his birthplace of Pennsylvania, a state Democrats narrowly lost to Trump in 2016, as a benchmark he must win. The former vice president has visited the state more than any other during the general election campaign.
Trump has gained ground over Biden in Pennsylvania, according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll released Monday, which showed the challenger leading between 49% and 45%, slightly narrower than a week earlier.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win it all,” Trump said Tuesday night at a rally in Erie, in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, where he warned supporters that Biden’s policies would decimate the state’s energy and manufacturing jobs.
Trump’s campaign coffers sank as he lagged behind Biden in the race for money, falling to around $ 63 million (around R1 billion) in the bank in late September after spending around $ 139. million during the month, according to a disclosure filed in federal elections. Commission Tuesday night.
At the end of September, Biden’s campaign had about $ 177 million in cash. Biden’s campaign raised $ 281 million during the month, more than three times what Trump’s campaign raised $ 81 million, disclosures show.
A month earlier, the Trump campaign reported having $ 121 million in cash. Biden’s campaign has yet to report its cash holdings as of the end of September, but this month it said it, along with the Democratic Party, had $ 432 million in the bank.
At least 35 million people have already cast their votes, according to the University of Florida’s US Elections Project, more than a quarter of the 2016 total vote.
Trump, who has resumed a busy schedule of campaign rallies since recovering from his recent fight with Covid-19, will appear Wednesday night at a rally at the Gastonia, North Carolina airport.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris will also be in North Carolina for voter mobilization events in Asheville and Charlotte.
A Reuters / Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed Biden and Trump were even in that state, with Biden at 49% and Trump at 46%, within the credibility range of the poll.
Obama’s appearance in the election campaign this week fills a void left by Biden, who has been staying home in Delaware since Monday for meetings and preparations before the debate with Trump in Nashville, Tennessee.
Obama publicly endorsed his former No. 2 after Biden closed the controversial battle for the Democratic nomination. Since then, he has attended fundraisers for Biden and delivered an important speech on Biden’s behalf at the party convention where the Democrat was nominated in August.
The in-person campaign has been disrupted in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit the United States especially hard and turned traditional rallies into a public health risk.
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