2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden appealed to Wisconsin voters who backed President Trump in 2016 during his second trip to the state since Labor Day.
“The simple truth is that Donald Trump ran for office saying he would represent the forgotten men and women of this country, and then, once in office, he forgot us,” Biden said in Manitowoc on Monday. “It’s not only, ‘Did he forgot them?’ though. The truth is, he never really respected us.”
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The two-term vice president added, “I know many of you were frustrated. You were angry. You believed you weren’t being seen, represented, or heard. I get it. It has to change, and I promise you this: It will change with me.”
Biden spoke about perceived weaknesses with Trump’s China trade deal and Trump’s “tax cut for the wealthy,” key reasons why Republicans vote for him despite concerns regarding his character.
“I think it’s about time a state school president sat in the Oval Office,” the University of Delaware graduate continued.
Biden visited the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc County on Monday, a county Trump won with 57% of the vote and 21 percentage points in the last presidential election. 2012 Republican standard-bearer Mitt Romney carried the county with 51% support. Then-candidate Barack Obama did the same in 2008 with 53% and 7 points.
Biden’s first Wisconsin swing was to Kenosha after Jacob Blake was shot by police last month. During Monday’s trip, the former vice president returned to previous talking points, such as COVID-19, after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on Friday. The justice’s death and her vacant seat on the nation’s highest court dominated political discussions over the weekend, but he didn’t mention it during his speech.
Instead, Biden addressed the upcoming milestone of 200,000 dying from COVID-19 in the United States.
“You can’t lose the ability to feel the sorrow and the loss and the anger for so many lives lost. We can’t let the numbers become statistics, background noise, just a blur,” he said.
Biden claimed that Trump panicked rather than responded to the virus, an issue he described as being “too big” for Trump.
“All his life, Donald Trump has been bailed out from any problem he faced. With this crisis, a real crisis, a crisis that required serious presidential leadership, he just wasn’t up to it,” he said.
Wisconsin was the tipping point in the 2016 election. Trump won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in 2016 by 23,000 votes, or less than a percentage point. He was the first Republican nominee to clinch the state since 1984.
