Trip Gabriel and Katie Glueck

Biden’s speech was billed as an economic policy address, yet it was light on new plans; he repeated many ideas he has previously advanced. Instead, he made an emotional appeal rooted in his middle-class biography to restore the “values” of an American compact, in which hard work allowed average families to afford a home, higher education and health care.

“There used to be a basic bargain in America: If you contribute to the well-being of the outfit you work with, you got to share in the benefits,” Biden said, speaking to a few hundred in a downtown auditorium. “That bargain’s been broken.”

Although corporate profits are up, Biden said, middle-class wages are stagnant and families are buckling under the burden of health bills and college. He promised to undo Republican tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy.

The former vice president spoke in a region where in 2016 Democrats abandoned the party in droves for Trump’s economic populism and nativism.

Winning back at least a share of those voters in Scranton — and in dozens of Scrantons across the northern industrial states — is most likely the key for Democrats in depriving Trump of a second term.

Biden’s appearance came the same day that a new CNN national poll showed him with a commanding lead in the Democratic primary, with the support of 34% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 19% and Sen. Bernie Sanders at 16%. It is Biden’s widest lead in the CNN survey since shortly after he announced his bid for president.

But there is no national primary, of course, and Biden’s advantage in the early-primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire has ebbed or evaporated. The CNN survey is a sign that nationally he has retained strong support despite facing weeks of unproved attacks by Trump on him and his son Hunter Biden over their activities in Ukraine, an issue driving the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Biden’s economic prescriptions, less sweeping than those of other leading Democrats seeking the nomination, include a $15 federal minimum wage, tripling funding for schools with at-risk students, free community college and a plan for students to pay down their college debt by committing to community service.

Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate is only 3.9%, though it is higher, 5.2%, in Lackawanna County, where Scranton is. But a manufacturing downturn may be underway statewide, with 8,100 jobs lost this year so far, an issue that could cut into the president’s 2016 promises to restore industry in the Rust Belt.

While Biden visited Scranton in northeast Pennsylvania, Trump was scheduled to be in Pittsburgh in the western part of the state Wednesday afternoon to address natural gas drillers. The president’s visit comes close to the anniversary of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in that city when a gunman killed 11 worshippers.

Although Democrats made strong gains in the 2018 midterms in Pennsylvania, it is very much up in the air whether they will carry the state next year, and who would be their most formidable opponent to the president. Trump has held rallies both before and after his election at an arena in nearby Wilkes-Barre that drew some 10,000 people.

Although Hillary Clinton narrowly carried Lackawanna County, Trump cut deeply into the Democratic margin of more than 26,000 votes that Barack Obama piled up here in 2012.

Democrats have been arguing ever since about how to recapture those voters, mostly white and working class, and how much to focus on them. Biden, who is regarded warmly by many Pennsylvanians thanks to his history here, spent many minutes recounting family stories he has told regularly: his father moving alone to Delaware for a job but promising to send for the family when he could afford to; his father feeling ashamed when a bank turned him down for a loan to pay for his son’s college. His father telling young “Joey” that “the measure of success is not whether you get knocked down, it’s how quickly you get up.”

The split-screen moment in Pennsylvania comes after weeks of clashes between the Trump and Biden camps. In the last month, Biden has faced concerns from some Democrats over whether he was responding quickly and aggressively enough to Trump’s attacks. His campaign has settled on a strategy of frequently criticizing Trump and seeking to discredit his messages, while also focusing on policy matters — health care in particular.

Jim Connors, a former Democratic mayor of Scranton who attended Biden’s speech, maintained that despite Trump’s 2016 strength in the region, disillusionment has set in with some who voted for him.

“I think that Trump fooled the nation because his pitch was, ‘I’m going to kick their rear ends: the Mexicans, China and NATO, everybody; they’ve all been taking advantage of us,’” Connors said. “And he did nothing.”

This article originally appeared in

Joe Biden, in Scranton, Says Trump Owes Current Economy to Obama Years

SCRANTON, Pa. — Former Vice President Joe Biden returned to his native city Wednesday seeking to undermine President Donald Trump’s strongest argument to voters for reelection, the resilient economy, accusing Trump of inheriting an economic upturn but, “just like everything else he inherited, he’s in the midst of squandering it.’’

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Joe Biden, in Scranton, Says Trump Owes Current Economy to Obama Years