Biden belts the rich in first rally of 2024 election campaign
The US president spoke before the AFL-CIO, which has given him a historically early endorsement.
US President Joe Biden has promised higher wages and more jobs to union rank and file while taking some populist shots at the wealthy at his first political rally since announcing his re-election bid.
“I truly believe this country is about to take off – I really believe it,” Mr Biden told a crowd of about 2000 union members who came to see him at a ballroom at the Pennsylvania Convention Centre on Saturday (Sunday AEST).
“We’ve got a fight on our hands. And my question to you is simple: Are you with me?”
The AFL-CIO, which includes 60 unions representing more than 12.5 million workers, hosted the rally to trumpet its historically early endorsement of Mr Biden’s candidacy, which came on Friday. Labor unions traditionally provide Democrat candidates with significant organising muscle, and the event was designed to show that they have coalesced behind Mr Biden well ahead of what is expected to be a bitterly contested election season.
It comes days after Mr Biden locked up endorsements from four major environmental groups including the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, shoring up support from another major chunk of the Democrat coalition and one that has at times been at odds with unions.
Still, some potential fissures in the Democrat base remain. During a video testimonial that played before Mr Biden spoke, an Alaska union member thanked the President for greenlighting the Willow project, a drilling project expected to produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak. Environmentalists have called it a “carbon bomb” and have strongly criticised Mr Biden for the decision.
The early flex from the nascent Biden re-election campaign was designed to contrast with the uncertainty in the Republican field. GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has been twice indicted and could face a third set of charges in Georgia while an increasingly crowded field threatens to prevent Republican votes from coalescing around one alternative.
Mr Biden’s rally came ahead of the build-out of much of his re-election apparatus. The President is planning to base his re-election campaign in Delaware, according to a White House official.
Mr Biden so far faces only nominal competition for the Democratic presidential nomination. Many of his major rivals from the 2020 primary either work in his White House or have signed on to participate in his campaign. The President announced his re-election campaign in April via a video.
Republicans say they are unfazed by Mr Biden’s early push. “They’re worried Joe Biden can’t make it to the election without major gaffes,” said Kristin Davison, a top official at Never Back Down, an outside group supporting Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid. “And they don’t have a bench. Between Biden and Clinton they have effectively locked out their bench for years.”
Mr Biden focused his remarks on the economy, ticking through how some of his major legislative victories will affect the bank accounts of working people. He said that Republican efforts to repeal his legislative agenda should be seen as an attack on the working class. “Guess what? They’re coming for your jobs,” he said. “They’re coming for your future.”
Mr Biden’s advisers have been privately frustrated that the President hasn’t received the credit they feel he deserves for keeping unemployment historically low as wages have increased. Three of five respondents disapprove of Mr Biden’s handling of the economy, according to a Wall Street Journal poll conducted in April.
Mr Biden also doled out a helping of red meat for the union audience. “If investment bankers in this country went on strike tomorrow nobody would miss – notice them,” he said, to laughter from the audience. In contrast, he said, if union workers failed to show up “the country would come to a grinding halt”.
That said, the President’s primary focus for now is raising money, even from some of those same bankers.
On Friday Mr Biden spoke to about three dozen guests in the Greenwich, Connecticut., home of billionaire couple Sue and Stephen Mandel. There he touted his deal-making skills in lifting the debt ceiling.
The Wall Street Journal
Grey area: anatomy of a TV pop culture hit
During almost two decades on air, writers of hit TV show Grey’s Anatomy have had to weave a seemingly endless stream of medical cases into the complicated, sexy, often tragic lives of its characters.
Reasons for regret when the vote is done
They can’t both lose, but either one could. If victory has 1000 fathers, defeat in the 2024 presidential race either way will have at least a dozen reasons.