Scranton, Pa
CNN
—
In front of several dozen union carpenters here this weekend, President Joe Biden got excited.
“Now I know some of you are tempted to think they’re macho men,” Biden said, referring to his former rival, former President Donald Trump, who is courting male voters in a razor-thin election against his vice president .
Not to be outdone, Biden recalled a long-ago rumble that took place here when he was a child.
“I’ll tell you what, man, when I was in Scranton, we had a little trouble figuring out the plot at times,” he said, sounding anything but menacing. “These are the kind of guys you’d like to kick in the ass.”
Here in his hometown, the president made what would likely be his last trip to a battlefield before Election Day. After fifty years in public life, it was a subdued final campaign appearance as an incumbent.
During Biden’s political winter, it was perhaps inevitable that it would all come back to Scranton.
The day had the hallmarks of a Biden classic: There was the mayor’s toddler on the tarmac, introduced as Biden’s “ice cream buddy”; there was the round of “Happy Birthday,” sung to a stranger (“She’s turning 41!”); there was the vague reference to schoolyard violence.
Vice President Kamala Harris was nowhere around; her campaign rally in Atlanta started around the same time Biden spoke. Not even Senator Bob Casey, who was involved in a fierce battle for his seat in the Senate.
None of it was quite the final-weekend campaign rally that Biden once hoped to organize in support of his own candidacy. It wasn’t even the barnstorming tour of Pennsylvania he once envisioned leading in support of Harris.
But even though it was a much smaller affair, Biden expressed no disappointment in his address to about a hundred members of the local carpenters’ union. Taped to the wall behind his podium, next to the Harris-Walz campaign signs, were a few posters that simply read, “Thanks, Joe.”
“You know, we’ve asked a lot of each other, you and I, the unions and me,” Biden said, recalling his long dependence on organized labor in his half-century of public life. ‘I ask you one more thing. I ask for your support for Kamala and Tim Walz.”
“I’m not just asking about myself,” he continued. “I’ll be gone.”
By largely staying off the campaign trail this year, Biden has slowly come to terms with his declining presence in the country’s political discourse.
An episode this week that featured a verbal blunder about Trump supporters being “trash” only seemed to confirm many Democrats’ concerns about giving Biden a bigger role. In the final stretch of a razor-thin campaign, the last thing anyone on Harris’ team wanted to do was respond to a seemingly unintentional insult from someone who is no longer a candidate.
There was a time when Biden envisioned a much bigger role for himself this fall. He declared in September that he would be “on his way” starting on Labor Day and made a plea to his vice president.
But as the 2024 campaign nears a photo finish, the political imperatives of distance from an unpopular incumbent outweighed Harris’ desire to pay tribute to the man who handpicked her as his successor.
It’s fair to say that Harris has shown nothing but loyalty to Biden, both publicly and privately. She genuinely respects and cares about the president and understands his desire to help her win.
But in a “do no harm” election, where any utterance could be a dealbreaker for a handful of embattled voters, there has been little room to celebrate Biden’s legacy, at least on the campaign trail.
And so, while Harris headlines arena rallies with Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez — and while Democratic surrogates like Barack and Michelle Obama and even the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, swaying across the battlefield – Biden shows up in union halls playing to his strengths and trying to avoid getting into them again.
In Scranton, where the President Biden Expressway leads downtown, the goodwill is clear.
“Scranton becomes a part of your heart. It gets into your heart. It’s real,” Biden said. “I’m so proud to be back.”
It was in Scranton that Biden spent the morning of Election Day in 2020, addressing supporters who had gathered outside a union building and stopped by his parents’ home.
As he signed the living room wall, Biden wrote: “From this house to the White House by the grace of God.”
And he went to the White House, propelled by support from places like Scranton, where Biden made a pitch focused on economic opportunity and performed better among white working-class voters than his Democratic predecessors.
Biden still believes he can be of service in a state like Pennsylvania, where he has deep roots and has visited more than almost anywhere else since taking office. Just since July 21, the day he announced he would drop his bid for a second term, Biden has been to Pennsylvania ten times.
He has expressed frustration that polls show a tight race — tighter than he thinks it should be, against a candidate like Trump — and wants to help where he can.
Watching from the sidelines during the race he entered just over three months ago, Biden has embarked on a soul-searching journey, say those close to him, reflecting on both the long arc of his career and its abrupt end.
Biden, these people say, remains steadfast in his view that he could defeat his predecessor in November if he remains at the top of the Democratic ticket. But he acknowledges that offering that vision to others may not be in everyone’s best interest.
“People love Joe Biden. And they respect and recognize that Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, served alongside her as vice president, and supported her when he chose to step back as our nominee,” said Senator Chris Coons, Biden’s friend and fellow Delawarean. said this week on CNN. “I think it’s important that people listen to President Biden, but they know where he stands and they know that he fully embraces and supports Vice President Harris.”
As he wrapped up his address to carpenters here, Biden sought to lay out the stakes of Tuesday’s election.
“What will happen – what will happen if you exchange my administration for his?” he said. “No, I’m not kidding. I’m nothing special.”
That moment of self-effacement brought out a cry of, “Yes, you are!” from his audience, followed by a chant of “Thanks, Joe!”
