MILLERSVILLE, Pennsylvania — Jill Biden, the first lady of the United States, gave brief but fiery remarks to women attending the Women for Biden event here in Lancaster on Sunday, warning that former President Donald Trump would be a disaster if he wins in November.
“Donald Trump is dangerous to our families and to our country,” she said while flanked by two dozen supporters at the event at Millersville University. “We cannot let him win. We cannot sit by while our freedoms slip away. We are going to walk every block and knock on every door.”
“We are going to organize phone banks and register voters. We are going to meet this moment as if our fundamental rights are at stake,” she said, then for emphasis shouted, “Because they are!” And her supporters in attendance shouted along.
“As if our democracy is on the line,” she shouted again, adding, “We are going to fight like hell and we are going to win.”
Her touchstone issue was abortion, but abortion in Pennsylvania is legal up to 24 weeks. It would take the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat and staunch supporter of abortion rights, to support legislation that upended abortion rights, and even then only if it had passed in not one but two successive legislative sessions.
Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said that is very unlikely to happen with a legislative body that is majority Democratic in the state House and Republicans holding a slight majority in the state Senate.
Jill Biden then went to suburban Pittsburgh, her second visit here in a month, to give a rallying call to supporters at an intimate concert venue called “Mr. Smalls.” There, she said “Radical Republicans are sacrificing the health, freedom, and future of women in the name of a political agenda.”
Jill Biden’s event came in conjunction with hundreds of her husband's campaign surrogates being deployed across the country this week, days ahead of the first debate, focusing repeatedly on abortion rights and threats to democracy.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has been holed up at Camp David preparing for this Thursday’s debate.
The latest Gallup and ABC News/Ipsos polls show that the economy and inflation are the most important issues for voters determining who they will support for president in November. While abortion rights was a big mover of votes for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections and 2023 off-year elections, this year voters are still feeling the weight of inflationary costs on food, home and car insurance, and gasoline. The border crisis, crime, homelessness, and the drug crisis also remain top concerns.
Democratic operatives on the Biden campaign mocked Trump’s visit to Pennsylvania at Temple University last week because in their view he did not attract as many attendees as former President Barack Obama and Joe Biden did in the same venue two years ago. There are two things to unpack here. First, the reality is that Obama, Biden, and then-candidates John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro attracted a similar size crowd in November of 2022, but there were curtains placed up to make the Temple venue appear smaller and thus more crowded.
But the more important thing to unpack is the fact that Trump went there at all, a place where Republicans rarely get votes. This is important in an election that will be all about the margins. As one local Democratic strategist admitted, his fellow Democrats were missing the point: “He went where no Republican ever goes and asked for their vote. That is something I haven’t seen since Tom Ridge,” he said, referring to the Pennsylvania Republican governor from 1995 to 2001.
Borick said in a state like Pennsylvania where everything is on the margins, “You have to go to unconventional places to build a coalition, and you have to leave nothing on the field in an election that might come down to just a few people.”
Showing up matters, but so does the message. The Biden team is telling the public their message is about abortion and doom if Trump is president again. But here is the thing: They already have the pro-abortion vote. They also already have the vote from people horrified by the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. What they do not have is the vote from black, white, and Hispanic working-class voters whose concerns center on inflation, crime, the drug problem, and the border crisis.
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Jill Biden’s fear-and-loathing trip across Pennsylvania is what we can expect for the next months leading up to November. It is the same message Joe Biden has been delivering. But one would imagine that if your poll numbers are still sinking in Pennsylvania, then maybe you should change your message.
To date, no one on Team Biden seems to understand what this election is about. They keep running on what they wish this election was about.
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