President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, joined the pitched electoral struggle over Pennsylvania on Tuesday, fanning out with three appearances across the Philadelphia area intended to aid Vice President Kamala Harris in what may be the most consequential swing state.
While his wife helped staff a phone bank across town, Mr. Biden joined a dinner held by the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee at the local sheet metal workers’ union hall, where he revved up attendees with a punchy speech and unleashed a long list of attacks against former President Donald J. Trump.
“He has the same ideas on race as the 1930s. Trump’s ideas on the economy are from the ’20s. Trump’s ideas on women are from the ’50s,” he said. “Folks, this is 2024. We can’t go back.”
But as often as Mr. Biden sought to contrast his record with Mr. Trump’s, he carefully tacked back several times to express support for Ms. Harris. He compared her to himself in growing out of his role as former President Barack Obama’s running mate, seeking to support her without defining her in his own unpopular image.
“I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president,” he said. “That’s what Kamala is going to do. She’s been loyal so far, but she’s going to cut her own path.”
Mr. Biden’s visit was a reminder that just three weeks before the election, even when the presidential candidates are not in Pennsylvania, they are well aware of the need to maintain a presence in the state. With 19 electoral votes, it is the largest of the battleground prizes, and both campaigns would face narrow paths to victory without it.
Even as Mr. Biden visited, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, held a town hall-style event of his own with the group Moms for America in Philadelphia’s northwestern suburbs, and Gwen Walz, the wife of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, campaigned in Harrisburg, the state’s capital.
For the Harris campaign, Mr. Biden could prove a valuable surrogate in Pennsylvania, given his personal ties to the state from growing up in Scranton and his ability to appeal to white working-class voters. But deploying a president whose approval ratings are still underwater also comes with risks.
Mr. Biden has made trips to battleground states, but mostly to talk about his administration’s policies rather than appear at campaign events for Ms. Harris. The Harris campaign has been careful to use Mr. Biden in a limited, targeted way with an eye on union members and working-class voters.
“It is always true that the president stumping for you is a mixed bag,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic advocacy group. “He carries enormous weight. He is a native son. He is very popular with certain demographics there. But he is also bearing the weight of certain policies people don’t like.”
Since last year, when Mr. Biden headquartered his re-election campaign in nearby Wilmington, Del., much of Pennsylvania has been blanketed with political events and fund-raisers, with Philadelphia playing host to many of the race’s biggest events, including the sole debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump.
“The winner of Pennsylvania isn’t certain to be the next president but it’s likely,” Mr. Bennett said. “It’s just the center of the target for both” of the campaigns.
On Monday, both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump logged stops in Pennsylvania, with the vice president rallying supporters in Erie while the former president fielded a few questions at a town hall-style event just outside Philadelphia that fell apart after a medical emergency in the crowd.
The Bidens took up the baton on Tuesday, each appealing to groups that are part of their core identity. Dr. Biden, herself a teacher, visited Montgomery County Community College and worked on a phone bank with other educators.
And for Mr. Biden, that meant returning to the familiar confines of a union hall, just a week after another visit to Philadelphia in support of Senator Bob Casey.
Appearing alongside Cherelle Parker, the Philadelphia mayor, and other Democratic officials, the president paused for a moment to discuss his administration’s commitment to labor unions and spoke of the gains unions have made as part of the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
Amid applause and chants of “thank you, Joe,” Mr. Biden highlighted data released by the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday indicating that the number of workers filing for union representation had doubled since the year he took office.
But as attendees stood around their tables in the union hall, inside walls sided with a rose gold-hued sheet metal, Mr. Biden ended with a call to voters to recognize the stakes of the election and support Ms. Harris.
“Most of all, we have to vote,” he said.
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