PHILADELPHIA, United States — US President
Joe Biden and his two predecessors converged on the state of Pennsylvania
Saturday, making closing pitches in a key battleground state for next week’s
midterm election.
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Biden was set to rally alongside his old boss Barack
Obama as the Democratic Party deployed their big guns to build the energy they
hope will spread nationwide and reverse the late rightward-shift in polling.
And in a split-screen preview of a potential rematch
of the 2020 presidential contest, the midwestern state is also playing host to
Biden’s predecessor and bitter political rival
Donald Trump.
Obama was the first to appear Saturday, lashing out
before a crowd in Pittsburgh at what he said were Republican plans to cut
government spending.
“They want to gut social security. They want to gut
medicare. They want to give rich folks and big corporations more tax cuts,”
Obama said.
Obama — still the party’s most bankable star six
years after leaving the White House — threw his support behind Democratic
candidate John Fetterman, who is in a dead heat against Republican TV physician
Mehmet Oz in their crucial Senate race.
Biden and Obama were to appear later in the day in
Philadelphia, the historic cradle of US independence where the 44th and 46th
presidents will woo voters from the suburbs that make for a crucial base of
Democratic support.
Just a few kilometers east of Pittsburgh in Latrobe,
Trump — the one-term 45th president with ambitions to return as the 47th — will
seek to firm up support in a region that delivered him big margins in 2016 and
2020.
Pennsylvania is seen as a must-win not just for
control of the Senate, but also for the balance of power among the country’s 50
state governors, influential officials that weigh in on most aspects of voters’
lives, from education and health care to voting rights.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro has
been spotlighting the fringe views of state senator Doug Mastriano, his
far-right opponent who was involved in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020
election.
A victory for Trump-backed Mastriano would give the
prominent election denier oversight of the state’s voting system for the 2024
presidential race.
Like Biden, Trump has visited Pennsylvania twice this
year, rallying for Oz and Mastriano most recently in Wilkes-Barre in early
September.
The 76-year-old tycoon has already claimed that the
state’s elections have been “rigged”, echoing his false claims that his own
2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud.
“As Biden’s approval rating plummets,
Pennsylvania crime spikes, and Pennsylvanians grapple with a 74 percent hike in heating oil,
coupled with record inflation, just weeks away from winter,” Trump’s office
said in a statement.
“The America First Movement offers the Keystone
State an alternative vision for America: safe streets, cheap gas, low
inflation, and a thriving American economy.”
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