Biden, Trump burnish labor images
Worker vote, economy key themes in pitches
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump spent Monday diminishing each other’s credentials on the economy and understanding of the American worker as the presidential campaign entered its final, post-labor Day stretch.
While workers live by an “American code,” Trump “lives by a code of lies, greed and selfishness,” Biden said as he met with labor leaders in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a key swing state.
Trump, meanwhile, tried to put the halting economic recovery under the best light in a White House press conference in which he said Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, would “destroy this country and would destroy this economy.”
Labor Day typically marks the unofficial start to the fall campaign season as candidates accelerate their activity for the final sprint to Election Day. Both campaigns reflected that urgency Monday, as Harris and Vice President Mike Pence each campaigned in Wisconsin, a state Trump won in 2016.
The events played out against the background of the pandemic, which has upended campaigning and pushed Biden and Harris in particular to conduct much of the traditional election activity online.
While the health of the American economy and the status of workers were dominant Labor Day themes, both campaigns also focused on recent protests that have roiled Wisconsin and the rest of the nation after police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha last month.
Harris met privately with Blake’s family at the Milwaukee airport after arriving in the state, where she spoke with Blake by phone from his hospital bed.
Harris told Blake she was proud of him and individually spoke to each of his family members, in person and on the phone, urging them to take care of their physical and mental health, Blake’s lawyers said in a statement.
Biden met with Blake’s family during a visit to Wisconsin last week. Trump did not during a trip of his own last week, instead meeting with law enforcement and business owners whose property had been damaged during protests. Nor did Pence, who touched on the protests during a speech in La Crosse, where he toured an energy facility.
“We will have law and order in every city in this country for every American of every race and creed,” Pence said.
Earlier in the day, Trump painted Biden as a leader incapable of handling the coronavirus and reviving the economy, and he pledged his “undying loyalty to the American worker.”
He boasted of having added more than 10 million jobs since May. He also noted that the unemployment rate had “plunged” to 8.4 percent. It was a sharper decline from the prior month than many economists expected.
He said Biden and the Democrats would “immediately collapse the economy.”