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Joe Biden’s campaign launched a new offense against the Trump administration on Monday, campaigning in a red state and accusing Republicans of hypocrisy as they sought to portray Democrats as anti-religious during supreme court hearings for Amy Coney’s nomination. Barrett.
Biden campaigned in Ohio, attempting to expand the map of the battlefield and keep Trump on the defensive in a state that was thought to be out of reach for Democrats after Trump’s wide margin of victory there four years ago.
A series of recent polls have seen the Democratic challenger lead Trump in national polls, often by double digits. Similarly, many state battlefield polls, while often narrower than the national picture, have Biden with healthy leads. The situation has prompted several high-level Republicans to make rare public warnings of losing the White House, and perhaps even that Republicans lose the Senate.
On the campaign trail, Biden emphasized an economic message and touted his own record, while calling Trump out to have deserted working-class voters who helped him win the Rust Belt states that put him in the White House in 2016.
In Toledo, Biden approached the United Auto Workers, which represents a local General Motors propulsion plant. The former vice president spoke in a parking lot with about 30 American-made cars and trucks positioned nearby, and took a decidedly populist note, praising the unions and arguing that it represented working-class values, while Republican Trump only cared about impressing. to the citizens. Ivy League and country club set.
“I don’t measure people by the size of their bank account,” Biden said. “You and I measure people by the strength of their character, their honesty, their courage.”
Meanwhile, when Barrett’s nomination hearings began in Washington, Biden’s campaign was offended by Republican criticism that they had pointed to Barrett’s Catholic faith as a reason not to nominate her, even though Democrats focused almost entirely on issues like health care.
A spokesman for Biden accused Republicans of double standards, noting that the Democratic candidate would be only the second Catholic president in US history if elected next month. “Where were these Republican senators when Trump scandalously attacked Biden’s faith, saying it would ‘hurt God’?” Andrew Bates said in a tweet.
Trump said during a campaign event in August that Biden would “take down his guns, destroy his second amendment. Without religion, without anything, it hurts the Bible, it hurts God. Trump added about Biden: “He’s against God, he’s against guns, he’s against energy, our kind of energy.”
In Ohio, Biden highlighted his role as vice president as the Obama administration bailed out the US auto industry after the 2008 financial crash. George W. Bush signed the aid package after the 2008 election, but the Obama administration handled most of it. of the rescue program.
“The auto industry that supported one in eight Ohioans was on the edge of the abyss,” Biden said at the drive-thru rally, prompting honking horns from people listening from their vehicles. “Barack and I bet on you, and it was worth it.”
Trump, meanwhile, was resuming campaign trips for the first time since testing positive for the coronavirus, and held an evening rally in Florida. And Vice President Mike Pence hosted his own Midwest event in Ohio’s capital Columbus in closing remarks at Savko & Sons, an excavation company that hosted Obama at one of its workplaces in 2010, shortly before get Biden on stage in Toledo.
In a nod to the Senate confirmation hearings on Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination, where Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, was participating remotely, Pence declared to applause that “we’re going to occupy that Market Stall”.
Pence also noted that Biden has declined to say whether he will heed calls from some progressive Democrats who would like the party to expand the number of Supreme Court seats, should the Democrats win the White House and Senate. on November 3 while they retain control of the house.
