Biden follows Lamb strategy to flip Trump voters in red states
MT. LEBANON, Pa. — When Joe Biden came to the Pittsburgh suburbs in 2018 to stump for Conor Lamb’s long-shot special election campaign, he made a pitch directly to the sort of blue-collar union workers who had abandoned the Democratic Party when Hillary Clinton was on the ballot.
“I don’t know all of you personally, but I know you,” Biden said at a rally a week before Lamb became the first Democrat to flip a Republican House seat during Donald Trump’s presidency. “I know this state. I know this region. I know what it’s made up of. I know the values that underpin all of what you believe in — family, community, again, not leaving anybody behind.”
Two and a half years later, Biden is preparing for a virtual party convention, beginning Monday, that will formally install him as the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee. He arrived at this moment with a sizable lead over Trump in the polls, using a playbook first employed to success by Lamb two years ago, and then borrowed by dozens of Democrats during the midterm elections later that year.
Biden has repeatedly returned to the same themes and strategies that supported Lamb to a surprise, if razor-thin, victory in a district that Trump carried by about 20 points in 2016 — and where Democrats were so insignificant that they had not fielded a candidate since 2012.
Lamb’s victory showed Democrats how to prevail in Republican territory during the Trump era: focus on kichen-table issues; inspire defections from college-educated suburban voters — especially women — who had been core Republican voters for decades; and offer conservative-leaning voters a sober, reassuring alternative to a chaotic president.
It helped that Lamb was a Marine veteran and a former federal prosecutor — a resume of service to the country that he and fellow Democrats used to contrast themselves with Trump and Republicans who came from the business world.
Biden has likewise used his decades of experience in the Senate and eight years as vice president to highlight his own public service, while reminding audiences that he regularly ranked among the least-wealthy senators to demonstrate his commitment to the middle class.
Although Trump twice traveled to Pennsylvania to hold rallies for Lamb’s opponent, Lamb, seeking to distance himself from his party’s left-leaning brand, turned away entreaties from nearly all ambitious national Democrats interested in stumping for him — all except for Biden, with whom he spent a day traversing the district speaking to union workers.
“There are a lot of people who voted for me in 2018 not so much for reasons of policy or party, but just reasons of change,” Lamb said from atop a picnic table during an outdoor interview this past week in a park near his home in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb. “People were unsatisfied with how things were going, and I promised that I would do my job differently than the guy you had before me. And I think that’s what Vice President Biden is basically doing.”
There is no guarantee that Biden can replicate Lamb’s path to victory. Trump has retained devout loyalty from Republican voters. A November presidential contest will drive turnout far higher than in the special election in which Lamb won his surprise victory, or the 2018 midterm elections when Democrats won a sweeping triumph in the nation’s suburbs.