Biden returns to roots to pitch his new tax plan
President Joe Biden returns to his childhood hometown of Scranton on Tuesday to open three straight days of campaigning in Pennsylvania, capitalizing on the opportunity to work the battleground state while Donald Trump spends the week in a New York City courtroom for his first criminal trial.
The Democratic president plans to use Scranton, a working class city of roughly 75,000 people, as the backdrop for his pitch for higher taxes on the rich. At the same, he will portray Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee and a billionaire himself, as a tool of wealthy interests.
Biden will give a speech at a community center and
participate in a training for grassroots organizers at a union hall, according to his campaign. He'll also swing by his old house, which has served as a touchstone for him through the years, according to a person familiar with the plans who declined
to be identified ahead of Biden's arrival.
It's all aimed at reframing the conversation around the economy, which has left many Americans feeling sour about their financial situations at a time of stubborn inflation and elevated interest rates despite low unemployment.
Biden plans to spend Tuesday night in Scranton before continuing to Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning. He then goes back to the White House, only to return to Pennsylvania on Thursday, this time visiting Philadelphia.
By the time the week is over, Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris will have visited the state eight times this year, reflecting its importance to Biden's hopes for a second term.
“It's hard to draw paths to Biden winning the White House that don't involve Pennsylvania,” said Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. No Democrat has become president without winning the state since Harry Truman in 1948.
Scranton, the president's first destination, will blend the personal and the political for Biden. He grew up in a three-story colonial home in the Green Ridge neighborhood until his father struggled to find work and moved the family to Delaware when the future president was 10.
Although Delaware eventually became the launching pad for Biden's political career, he often returned to Scranton and grounded his autobiography in the city. He visited so often, he was sometimes called “Pennsylvania's third senator.”
In 2020, Biden described the presidential campaign as “Scranton versus Park Avenue.” His reelection team is framing this year's race in a similar way, releasing a video that includes interviews with his cousin, a grade school classmate and a county commissioner, among others making the case that Biden backs the middle class and has policies for the country's future.
“You've got Joe Biden, who sees the world from the kitchen table where he grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Donald Trump, who sees the world from his country club down in Mara-Lago,” said Michael Tyler, the campaign's communications director.
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, described Scranton as a “mythical place in political culture,” and it will provide a test for Biden's political appeal.
“It's an area that, on paper, aligns perfectly with the populist gains of the Republican Party during the Trump era,” Borick said.