SCRANTON, Pennsylvania –
President Joe Biden made a nostalgic return to the home where he grew up in working-class Scranton on Tuesday, kicking off three days of campaigning across Pennsylvania calling for higher taxes on the wealthy and casting Donald Trump as an outsider. contact. elitist
When the Democratic president wasn’t trying to mitigate the populist appeal of his Republican predecessor’s comeback bid, he seemed to savor his trip down memory lane. He stayed longer than expected at his childhood home, where an American flag fluttered gently in the wind on the front porch and neighbors gathered on the sidewalk under blossoming trees and a pale blue sky. The president later posed for photos with children, some in school uniforms, in the backyard.
Biden is looking to gain ground in a key battleground state as Trump spends much of the week in a New York City courtroom for his first criminal trial. Biden heads to Pittsburgh on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday, but he began his travels in Scranton, which has long played a starring role in his political autobiography.
On Tuesday, the city of 75,000 served as a backdrop for Biden’s efforts to reframe the conversation about the economy, which has left many Americans feeling bitter about their financial situation at a time of persistent inflation and skyrocketing interest rates. despite low unemployment.
The president said he wanted to make the tax code fairer, keeping more money in Americans’ pockets, while criticizing Trump, a billionaire, as a tool of wealthy interests.
“When I look at the economy, I don’t look at it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago. I look at it through the eyes of Scranton,” Biden said, contrasting his hometown with the Florida estate where Trump lives.
Biden has proposed a 25 percent minimum tax rate for billionaires. He added that taxes are “how we invest in the country.”
“Scranton values or Mar-a-Lago values,” Biden said. “These are competing visions for our economy that put fundamental justice issues at the heart of this campaign.” She spoke at a community center from a stage flanked by a banner that read “Tax Fairness for All Americans.”
The president said decades of Republican policies that cut taxes on the wealthy in an effort to stimulate the economy “failed America, and Donald Trump embodies that failure.” He scoffed that Trump’s background taught him little more than “the best way to get rich is to inherit it,” and criticized the sharp drop in the market value of the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social.
“If Trump’s stock in Truth Social, his company, falls further, he could do better with my tax plan than with his,” Biden joked.
Near the end of his speech, the president sharply criticized Trump for allegedly calling veterans who died in combat “suckers and losers.” He said the comments, which Trump has denied, were “disqualifying”, adding: “Thank God I wasn’t standing next to him.”
Later that day, Biden spoke at a training session for grassroots organizers at a union hall, telling attendees: “We have to win. This is about old-fashioned politics. This is about knocking on doors.”
Throughout the multiple stops, there was praise for Biden’s roots in this city, where crowds lined the streets to cheer his motorcade. Trump flags were rare and there were only a few protests against Biden’s support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
“Joe Biden has never forgotten where he’s from,” Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said before Biden’s speech at the community center. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro echoed the idea, saying, “This is a guy who has never forgotten the people he grew up with.”
“They’re the people in your mind and they’re the people in your heart,” Shapiro said.
When Biden took the stage at the community center, the crowd chanted “four more years” before he began speaking. Biden smiled and joked: “I think I should go home now.” He then quickly added, “except I’m already home.”
Biden grew up in Scranton’s Green Ridge neighborhood until his father had trouble finding work and moved the family to Delaware when the future president was 10 years old.
Although Delaware ultimately became the launching pad for Biden’s political career, he often returned to Scranton, including a visit to his childhood home on Election Day 2020.
During that campaign, Biden described the presidential campaign as “Scranton versus Park Avenue.” His re-election team is framing this year’s race in a similar way, releasing a video that calls for promoting the middle class and featuring interviews with his cousin, an elementary school classmate and a county commissioner.
Christopher Borick, director of the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College, described Scranton as a “mythical place in political culture” that will test Biden’s political appeal.
“It’s an area that, on paper, aligns perfectly with the populist achievements of the Republican Party during the Trump era,” Borick said.
However, Biden won the city and surrounding county in 2020. If Biden can dominate Scranton and similar places again this year, as well as limit Trump’s margins of victory in rural areas, he may be able to secure another victory in Pennsylvania.
Sam DeMarco, chairman of the Republican Party in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, said that “in general, it costs more to live today than when Joe Biden took office.”
“These are the things that families feel,” he said. “And a scheduled appearance by the president is not going to change that.”
As president, Trump signed into law a series of tax breaks in 2017 that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Many of the cuts expire at the end of 2025, and Biden wants to keep most of them in place to fulfill his promise that no one earning less than $400,000 will pay more in taxes.
However, he also wants to raise $4.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. His platform includes a “billionaire tax,” which would set a minimum 25 percent rate on the income of the wealthiest Americans.
Biden’s swing in Pennsylvania overlaps with the start of Trump’s first criminal trial, presenting an opportunity and a challenge for Democrats.
Trump is defending himself against criminal charges over a plan to suppress allegations of affairs with a porn actor and a Playboy model. Biden’s team has quietly embraced the contrast of the former president being held in court while the current president is given free rein to focus on economic issues that are a priority for voters.
The juxtaposition becomes less useful, however, if Trump captures the nation’s attention during the first criminal trial of a former president.
Biden did not mention Trump’s legal problems. Instead, he told the community center crowd that he learned in Scranton that “money does not determine value.”
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington.