SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — Chairman Joe Biden made a nostalgic return Tuesday to his childhood home in working-class Scranton, kicking off three days of campaigning across Pennsylvania by calling for higher taxes on the wealthy and casting Donald Trump like an out-of-touch elitist.
When the Democratic president didn’t try to blunt the populist appeal of his Republican predecessor’s comeback bid, he seemed to enjoy his trip down memory lane. He lingered longer than expected at his childhood home, where an American flag fluttered gently in the wind on the porch and neighbors crowded the sidewalk under flowering trees and a pale blue sky. The president later posed for photos with children, some wearing school uniforms, in the backyard.
Biden is looking to gain ground in a key state, while Trump is spending much of the week in a New York City courtroom for his first criminal trial. Biden leaves for Pittsburgh on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday, but he began his travels in Scranton, which has long played a starring role in his political autobiography.
On Tuesday, the city of 75,000 provided the backdrop for Biden’s efforts to reframe the conversation about the economy, leaving many Americans feeling sour about their financial situation at a time of stubborn inflation and high interest rates despite low unemployment.
The president said he wanted to make the tax code fairer and keep more money in Americans’ pockets, while criticizing Trump, himself a billionaire, as a tool for wealthy interests.
“When I look at the economy, I don’t look at it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago. I see it through the eyes of Scranton,” Biden said, contrasting his hometown with the Florida estate where Trump lives.
Biden has proposed a minimum tax rate of 25 percent for billionaires. He added that taxes are “the way we invest in the country.”
“The values of Scranton or the values of Mar-a-Lago,” Biden said. “These are the competing visions for our economy that raise questions about fundamental fairness at the heart of this campaign.” He spoke at a community center from a podium flanked by a banner that read “Tax Fairness for All Americans.”
The president said decades of Republican policies that cut taxes for the wealthy with the idea of boosting the economy “have failed America, and Donald Trump embodies that failure.” He mocked that Trump’s background taught him little more than “the best way to get rich is to inherit it,” and pointed to the sharp decline in the market value of the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social.
“If Trump’s shares in Truth Social, his company, fall even further, he might do better under my tax plan than his,” Biden joked.
Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, blamed Biden for inflation in a statement about his trip.
“It is no wonder that Pennsylvanians will vote to make America affordable again and elect President Trump in November,” he said.
Near the end of Biden’s speech, he sharply criticized Trump for allegedly calling veterans who died in combat “suckers and losers.” He said the comments, which Trump has denied, were “disqualifying,” adding: “Thank God I wasn’t standing next to him.”
Later in the day, Biden spoke at a training session for grassroots organizers in a union hall, telling attendees: “We have to win. It comes down to old-fashioned politics. It comes down to knocking.”
Throughout the stops, there were paeans to Biden’s roots in this city, as crowds lined the streets to cheer on his motorcade. Trump flags were rare, and there were only a few protests against Biden’s support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
“Joe Biden has never forgotten where he came from,” Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said before Biden’s speech at the community center. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro echoed the idea, saying, “This is a man who never forgot the people he grew up with.”
“It’s the people he thinks about, and it’s the people in his heart,” Shapiro said.
As Biden took the stage at the community center, the crowd chanted “four more years” before he began to speak. Biden smiled and joked, “I guess I should go home now.” Then he quickly added, “except I’m already home.”
Biden grew up in Scranton’s Green Ridge neighborhood until his father struggled to find work and the family moved to Delaware when the future president was 10.
Although Delaware ultimately became the launching pad for Biden’s political career, he often returned to Scranton, where he also visited his childhood home on Election Day 2020.
During that campaign, Biden described the presidential campaign as “Scranton versus Park Avenue.” His re-election team has framed this year’s race in a similar fashion, with a video calling for promoting the middle class and featuring interviews with his cousin, an elementary school classmate and a county commissioner.
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, described Scranton as a “mythical place in political culture” that will be a test of Biden’s political appeal.
“It’s an area that, on paper, fits perfectly with the Republican Party’s populist gains during the Trump era,” Borick said.
However, Biden won the city and surrounding county in 2020. If Biden can carry Scranton and similar places again this year and limit Trump’s victory margins in rural areas, he could potentially secure another victory in Pennsylvania.
Sam DeMarco, chairman of the Republican Party in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, said: “Across the board, it costs more to live today than it did when Joe Biden came into power.”
“These are the things that families are feeling,” he said. “And a scripted performance by the president will not change that.”
As president, Trump signed a series of tax breaks in 2017 that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Many of the cuts expire at the end of 2025, and Biden wants to keep a majority of them to fulfill his promise that no one making less than $400,000 will pay more in taxes.
However, he also wants to raise $4.9 trillion in revenue over ten years with higher taxes on the rich and corporations. His platform includes a “billionaire tax,” which would set a minimum rate of 25% on the income of the wealthiest Americans.
Biden’s swing in Pennsylvania overlaps with the start of Trump’s first criminal trial, presenting an opportunity and a challenge for Democrats.
Trump is defending himself against criminal charges over a scheme to suppress allegations of affairs with a porn actor and a Playboy model. Biden’s team has quietly embraced the contrast of the former president locked in a courtroom while the current president has free rein to focus on economic issues top of mind among voters.
The juxtaposition becomes less useful, however, as Trump sucks up the nation’s attention in the first-ever criminal trial of a former president.
Biden made no mention of Trump’s legal troubles. Instead, he told the crowd at the community center that he learned in Scranton that “money doesn’t determine your worth.”
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Associated Press writers Josh Boe and Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington.
