Pennsylvania and its main city, Philadelphia, are very familiar terrain for the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Originally from that State, he has visited the latter no less than 13 times since the beginning of his term. The votes in this territory, one of the great swing states in the elections, are vital to his prospects of continuing in the White House after next year’s elections. A compelling reason to celebrate in the city from which the country’s independence was proclaimed his first campaign rally, in which he has flaunted his economic credentials and has received a key accolade: that of the unions.
“We are transforming this country,” Biden said at the Philadelphia Convention Center, before an audience of two thousand workers, according to the spokesman for the AFL-CIO union center Ray Zaccaro, who had filled the amphitheater hours before the arrival president and who greeted almost every one of his sentences with cheers.
Without a tie, with a casual jacket and looking to display energy, the president has assured that “we have created more jobs in two years than any other president in four. Unemployment among black workers, among Latinos, is at record low numbers. Inflation is half that of a year ago. This has not happened alone. We have made it happen.”
Nothing was coincidence in this first rally. It wasn’t the place: Biden wants to coddle Pennsylvania. He already did it in 2020; as now, the starting gun was in one of the great cities of the State, the industrial Pittsburgh. In addition, he set up his campaign headquarters in Philadelphia. The move worked out for him: Pennsylvania is one of the states that in 2016 supported Donald Trump but four years later changed the orientation of their votes to give them to the Democratic candidate.
It was also no coincidence that he dedicated this initial act of the campaign to the unions. The support of the great central AFL-CIO, and other union organizations is fundamental to appeal to the workers. These associations also have great organizational capacity and a very capillary network capable of reaching remote corners of the country – and of effectively repeating Biden’s central message among their members: that his presidency is beneficial to the pockets of the average american.
“The AFL-CIO campaign will be essential in the pivotal states where the union vote will be decisive,” said this union center when announcing its support for the Democratic president. “Millions of home and workplace conversations will be supplemented by a digital outreach campaign, co-worker text messaging and other tactics to ensure we reach workers (to communicate) on the issues that matter most to them.”
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At the rally this Saturday, the message was also well thought out. Biden knows that she has an image problem before the citizens. That even among Democratic voters, his age – she will arrive at the elections on November 5, 2024 at 82 – and his clumsiness of movement are a factor that she weighs like a stone. His approval levels are close to 41%, while 54% of citizens declare their dissatisfaction with him to a greater or lesser degree.
The man who likes to say “watch me” when asked if his seniority is an obstacle wants to refer to his score sheet to prove that he is more effective than any of his rivals. Very especially, more decisive than Trump, the old rival of 2020 and his favorite now to achieve the Republican candidacy for the presidency.
The White House repeats over and over again that thirteen million jobs have been created under the Biden mandate, 339,000 of them last month, and unemployment rates are below 4%, historically low levels. Inflation, runaway last year, seems to be under control, and gasoline prices are far from the highs they were just twelve months ago. The cost of medicines and health insurance has fallen.
“My philosophy of building on the middle class, and from the bottom up is working,” the president pointed out at his rally. “When the middle class is doing well, the whole society is doing well,” he insisted.
This first act of campaigning comes two months after Biden formally announced in April and through an announcement in which he called to “finish the task” of his candidacy for reelection. A step that his supporters had been waiting for months before but that the president would have preferred to delay until autumn.
In part, the rally was his campaign’s response to those who believed that the delay in activating could give the Republicans an advantage and, above all, Trump, whose legal problems have made him omnipresent in the media since he declared himself in March. He became the first former president to be indicted in the United States.
Biden, who has given strict orders to his advisers to keep quiet about the charges against his potential rival, is not considering, for the moment, devoting his time, the most valuable raw material of a president, to campaigning and participating in a large number of of rallies. His electoral activity, for the moment, will focus on fundraising.
As the second quarter of the year draws to a close, a high level of donations to the campaign would send the message that his candidacy enjoys broad support. And vice versa, anemic coffers could set off alarm bells among his supporters. The president, who participated in a fundraising event in Connecticut on Friday, plans to travel to the states of California, Maryland, Illinois and New York for similar events.
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