Biden in Phila.: ‘Let’s stop fighting and start fixing’

Joe Biden directly challenged President Donald Trump as America’s “divider-in-chief” and offered himself as an antidote who can work across political divides in a speech Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia.

“If the American people want a president to add to our division, to lead with a clenched fist, closed hand and a hard heart, to demonize the opponents and spew hatred — they don’t need me. They’ve got President Donald Trump,” Mr. Biden said, standing on a platform in sun-bathed Eakins Oval. “I am running to offer our country — Democrats, Republicans and independents — a different path.”

Criticized on the left for his sometimes warm words for Republicans and promises of bipartisan comity, Mr. Biden doubled down on that sentiment. “I know how to go toe-to-toe with the GOP,” he said, “but it can’t be that way on every issue.”

Mr. Biden urged: “Let’s stop fighting and start fixing.”

He repeatedly argued that the country wants to move past political divisions, while also saying he would fight when it was called for.

“I know how to make government work,” he said. “Not by talking or tweeting about it, because I’ve done it.”

Mr. Biden’s speech capped a three-week opening campaign swing that has seen him expand his lead over the rest of the crowded Democratic field. While many of his rivals have spent months introducing themselves or laying out policy prescriptions, the former vice president, already nearly universally known, has worked to establish himself as the Democrat with the stature to counter Mr. Trump, whom he has painted as an existential threat to the country’s character.

Pennsylvania’s Republican chairman, Val DiGiorgio, said that as Mr. Biden campaigns, voters, especially those in the Keystone State, will see that the former vice president offers no “meaningful success and no real vision for the future.”

“We are happy to have the debate over whether or not Americans want a return to the failed Obama-Biden years or feel that they are better off due to the economic achievements seen under President Donald Trump’s leadership,” Mr. DiGiorgio said in a statement.

National Republicans pointed to Pennsylvania’s record low unemployment rate as they argued that Mr. Trump has delivered for the state, and the president has his own rally planned Monday near Williamsport.

Mr. Biden directly countered that argument, perhaps Mr. Trump’s main reelection talking point, by saying it was he and former President Barack Obama who rescued the country from a recession and handed over a healthy economy.

Mr. Biden’s event Saturday, coming the same week he announced that he will base his campaign in Center City, bookends a campaign launch that held its first major public event in Pittsburgh (after a highdollar fund-raiser in Philadelphia).

Both parties see Pennsylvania as vital to deciding the outcome of the 2020 election. Mr. Biden, born in Scranton, has made his Keystone State ties one of his major selling points as he argues that he is best-positioned to win back working-class white voters and Rust Belt swing states.

Mr. Biden leads the Democratic field in national polls and had a substantial lead in a Pennsylvania survey released this week.