PHILADELPHIA _ Joe Biden's campaign trail is hitting the rails Wednesday, as the Democratic nominee takes Amtrak from the site of the first presidential debate in Cleveland through Southwestern Pennsylvania to drum up support among working class voters in a Trump-friendly part of the state.
The "whistle stop tour," which starts in Ohio before coming to Pennsylvania, will stop in Pittsburgh, Greensburg, New Alexandria, Latrobe and then Johnstown, where Biden will speak at a socially distanced drive-in rally in the evening.
His latest of many trips to Pennsylvania _ a critical battleground state seen as increasingly likely to determine the winner between him and President Donald Trump _ ventures into the heart of the state's Trump Country. Some of the towns on his itinerary Wednesday are in counties that voted for Trump by double digits in 2016, and where Republicans have made voter registration gains since. But there are signs of a slight erosion in Trump's support in the southwest, driven in part by white working class voters who are more open to Biden than they were to Hillary Clinton.
Southwestern Pennsylvania has been a frequent destination for Trump, too. He held large airport rallies in Latrobe and Pittsburgh this month. Westmoreland County, home to Greensburg and Latrobe, saw the state's largest net increase in registered Republicans in the last four years, adding about 10,000 voters to GOP ranks. In Cambria County, home to Johnstown, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by almost 15,000 voters in 2016. Now the county is almost evenly split.
Trump needs to hold his ground in the region given that Biden appears to be blowing him out in the state's suburbs, including some gains even in more traditionally Republican ones like outside Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Biden is beating Trump among white working class women, according to polls over the last week, and he's eaten slightly into Trump's support among white working class men. All three were factors in new surveys showing Biden up by 9 points in the state.
He's built that advantage partly by centering his campaign on appeals to these voters. Biden calls the election a battle between "Scranton and Park Avenue," and now he's got revelations about Trump paying just $750 in federal income taxes to add to the pile. Biden touted his everyman credentials at town hall this month outside Scranton, saying guys like Trump look down on people who went to state school _ like Biden.
Now he's back on Amtrak, which he famously used to take the train from Washington, D.C., to Delaware every day to be home for his two young sons. He kept that habit up for 36 years and 2 million miles. On Wednesday, he aims to ride it a couple tracks closer to the White House
