Biden pushes spirit of bipartisanship for campaign kickoff in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA — Joe Biden, affectionately known to many Democrats in this city as Pennsylvania’s “third senator,” returned to the state of his birth Saturday to deliver a forceful call for national unity, looking past the Democratic presidential primary to directly appeal to the voters who helped power President Donald Trump’s victory in this state and across the country in 2016.
Biden, the former vice president and Delaware senator now pursuing his third bid for the presidency, trained his eye squarely on the general election as he cast the contest against Trump as a struggle to maintain American democracy.
And he struck a defiant tone toward those in his own party who had expressed discomfort with Biden’s emphasis on bipartisanship and his legacy of Washington dealmaking, as he argued that the stakes of the coming presidential election should transcend partisan passions of the moment.
“They say Democrats are so angry, the angrier a candidate can be, the better chance he or she has to win the Democratic nomination,” Biden said. “Well I don’t believe it, I really don’t.”
“If the American people want a president to add to our division, lead with a clenched fist, closed hand, a hard heart, to demonize the opponents and spew hatred — they don’t need me,” he went on. “They’ve got President Donald Trump. Folks, I am running to offer our country — Democrats, Republicans and independents — a different path.”
He got some of the most raucous applause of the day, though, when he took swipes at the president, pledging to defeat him and needling him, for example, over the strong economy, which had been one of the Trump campaign’s central messages.
“Just look at the facts, not the alternative facts,” Biden said. “President Trump inherited an economy from the Obama-Biden administration that was given to him, just like he inherited everything else in life.”
But before Republicans and independents in many states have the opportunity to consider Biden’s candidacy, he will first have to convince Democrats throughout a long campaign that as a 76-year-old white man with a sometimes-controversial record on matters ranging from criminal justice to abortion rights to foreign policy, he is still best-suited to represent a party that has moved left in recent years, animated by a young and diverse liberal flank.
The Democratic loss of Pennsylvania in 2016, a crucial piece of Trump’s victory, was top of mind for Biden’s supporters here. Several of his most prominent supporters pointed to a Quinnipiac University poll from this past week that showed Biden with a lead of 11 percentage points over Trump in a head-to-head matchup in this state.
“To become president, you’re going to have to go through Pennsylvania,” said Rep. Dwight Evans, DPa., whose congressional district includes the slice of Philadelphia where Biden spoke Saturday to a crowd officials said numbered about 6,000.