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JOHNSTOWN: With Election Day just three weeks away, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Tuesday focused on battle states that they both see as critical to achieving an Electoral College victory, tailoring their journey to better motivate voters who could cast potentially decisive votes.
Biden went to Florida to try the elderly, seeking to deliver a knockout blow in a state Trump needs to win as he tries to woo a group whose support for the president has waned. And Trump visited Pennsylvania, arguably the most important state on the electoral map, unleashing fierce attacks on Biden’s fitness for office in his opponent’s backyard.
“They shot him, friends. I hate to tell him, they shot him, “Trump told a large crowd in Johnstown, saying there was additional pressure on him to win because Biden was the worst presidential candidate of all time.” Can you imagine losing to a guy like this? Is incredible. “
At his second rally since contracting the coronavirus, Trump spoke for more than an hour before a crowd of thousands of people huddled together and mostly without a mask.
Like the night before in Florida, Trump seemed healthy, and his rhetoric about the pandemic, including the dubious claim that it was primarily a thing of the past, changed little despite his own illness, except for his threat to kiss others. members of the audience to demonstrate their immunity.
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Trump made a local pitch, underscoring the claim that a Democratic administration could limit fracking in areas where the economy is heavily dependent on energy, despite Biden’s proposal to ban only new leases on federal land, a fraction of fracking operations in the United States.
And Trump, touting his removal of a federal rule that would have brought more low-income housing to the suburbs, targeted groups whose support he has struggled to retain, including voters his rhetoric rejects.
“So I ask you to do me a favor. Suburban Women: Could I Like You? Please. Please. I saved your fucking neighborhood, okay? “Trump said.” The other thing: I don’t have that much time to be so nice. You know, I can do it, but I have to go fast. “
Biden spent the day in Florida, his third visit to the state in a month, looking to expand his advances with older voters. For Trump, “you are expendable, you are forgettable, you are virtually nobody,” Biden said at a senior center in Pembroke Pines, about 20 miles from Fort Lauderdale.
The “only tall Donald Trump seems to care about” is himself, Biden added.
After frequently criticizing Trump for not doing enough to promote the use of masks to prevent the spread of the virus, Biden wore two masks, one N-95 underneath a blue surgical mask, as he disembarked in Florida. Later that day, he switched to his normal mode of donning just one.
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Introducing Biden at Pembroke Pines, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz noted that “none of these men will enter the White House without the blessing of Florida elders.”
“There is a lot of talk about increasing the youth vote, and thank God for that,” said the Florida congresswoman. “But it is residents 65 and older who still influence elections in the Sunshine State.”
Biden also held a drive-in movie designed to promote voter mobilization in the predominantly African-American community of Miramar. His turnaround coincided with a $ 500,000 donation from billionaire former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg to increase Democratic turnout in Miami-Dade County.
“I am running as a proud Democrat, but I will rule as American President,” Biden told supporters, honking his horns as they listened from cars. “I will work both for those who vote against me and for those who vote for me.”
Back in Washington, Tuesday marked a second day of Senate hearings to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the Supreme Court. Trump and top Republicans see a quick confirmation as an opportunity to energize conservatives. Trump mentioned those procedures when he left the White House and said, “Amy was unbelievably fine.”
Biden’s campaign believes it can win the White House without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, but wants to lock in the state to fill in a margin of victory over Trump, who has questioned the legitimacy of an election in which many people will cast votes by mail. during the pandemic. Biden has promised to win Pennsylvania, but if he falls short, his path to victory narrows substantially.
With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is anchored by Philadelphia to the east, Pittsburgh to the west. But the rest of the state is largely rural, made up of small towns and villages where Trump raised the score four years ago. It will have to do it again, in even greater numbers, as its prospects have faded since 2016 in places like vote-rich suburban Philadelphia, where it underperformed past Republican measures.
Trump’s rally took place at Johnstown Airport in Cambria County, a historically coal and steel area that narrowly supported Democrat Barack Obama in 2008. But it has been biased Republican for the past three decades, and in the past three decades. In the 2016 election, Trump got 37 percent. victory point. The area is also substantially whiter, and has lower median incomes and lower rates of obtaining college degrees than the rest of Pennsylvania.
Biden, who was born 350 kilometers away in Scranton, visited Johnstown late last month. The former vice president has tried to present himself as an advocate for working-class voters while accusing Trump of focusing instead on stock market returns and Park Avenue values.
Despite the pandemic, the Trump campaign has prioritized in-person events and aggressive knocking on doors as it tries to attract new and low-propensity voters, including more members of the white working class who may have backed the Democrats in the past.
Republicans point to an aging population and a reduction in the voter registration lead for Democrats, down 20 percent from the 2016 election to 717,000, according to the latest Pennsylvania data.
