Biden stumps for Clinton, McGinty

President with a positive message.”

Mr. Biden did acknowledge that Americans of modest means had been hurting. “The middle class has got the living hell kicked out of them the past 15 years,” he said. And the vice president, a Scranton native, recalled that in the late 1900s, “I walked by so many padlocked factories, where they were unbolting machinery from the floor [to] be sent overseas. They called it outsourcing, and people where I came from got battered by it.”

Challenges remained, he said, including child care costs that often kept parents from working: “Child care in Pennsylvania, average cost $14,700 for a family with two kids. That’s why women aren’t in the workforce.”

But he predicted that if Ms. Clinton was elected, “You’ll see a renaissance in America like you haven’t seen in five decades.”

Chatham, formerly a women’s college that went coed last year, offered a welcome climate to a proClinton message. Several students agreed that Mr. Trump’s remarks about women — and recent allegations that he has accosted multiple women — had galvanized campus opinion even more. (Mr. Trump has denied the accusations.)

“Our campus was halfBernie, half-Hillary,” said senior Alexis McKenna, referring to Ms. Clinton’s primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Trump’s awful statements have been a big part of unifying it.”

“Now it’s personal,” agreed Carina Stopenski, a Chatham senior who said she was already “so excited to vote for a woman.”