Biden joins Clinton on the trail as Trump struggles mount

SCRANTON, Pa. — Vice President Joe Biden told voters at a Monday afternoon rally in his blue-collar hometown that Hillary Clinton understands the concerns of the middle class, while Donald Trump is seeking to exploit them.

“He’s trying to say he cares about the middle class,” Biden said. “Give me a break. And to repeat myself, it’s such a bunch of malarkey. He doesn’t have a clue.” The crowd erupted into cheers at Biden’s signature “malarkey” line — which he famously used at the Democratic National Convention last month.

During her brief remarks before Biden spoke, Clinton stressed her own ties to Scranton — her grandfather and father lived there, and she was christened at a local church — and tied it into her economic message. “I always remember that I am the granddaughter of a factory worker and the daughter of a small business owner and I’m so proud,” she said.

Both Clinton and Biden blasted Trump, with Clinton stressing that his economic plan is designed to benefit himself and other wealthy people. Clinton said Trump’s plan to eliminate the estate tax would save him $4 billion if he is as wealthy as he claims.

“Think of what we could do with those $4 billion,” she said. “We could pay for more than 47,000 veterans to get a four-year college education. We could provide health care to nearly 3 million kids.”

Clinton’s recent focus on a populist economic message may be helping her in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s numbers have plunged in recent weeks. The Scranton rally was originally scheduled for early July but was scrambled after the Dallas shooting that left five police officers dead.

At the time, Clinton and Trump were roughly tied in Pennsylvania surveys, and Trump insisted he could be the first Republican since George H.W. Bush to carry it. His focus on opposing free trade deals like NAFTA appeared to be appealing in the state, and the Clinton campaign likely figured it could use Biden’s help in reaching some swing voters.

Now, Clinton is up 9 points over Trump in the RealClearPolitics polling average — giving the rally the air of a celebration and homecoming.

“As Scranton has always had my back, we — all of us — will have your back, Hillary,” Biden said to cheers.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told Yahoo News that he believes Clinton has sharpened her message on trade and economic fairness since the convention, which he thinks has helped her in the state among working-class white voters.

On Thursday, she told a crowd in Warren, Mich., that she would continue to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership deal no matter what, including as a candidate, in the legislative lame-duck session after the November election, and as a potential future president. This was her strongest statement of opposition yet for the deal, which she backed while secretary of state.

Her campaign is also running an ad attacking Trump in Pennsylvania using a clip of the candidate in a 2012 appearance on David Letterman’s show, where the mogul admitted that many of his products are made in foreign factories. (Trump, meanwhile, has not run any political ads in Pennsylvania or elsewhere, and BuzzFeed reported his campaign infrastructure is sparse in the state.)

“The populist economic message and the concrete plans … that’s what the people of Scranton want to hear,” Rendell said, adding that both Biden and Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s VP pick, are good “messengers” to blue-collar voters.

Trump also spent the weeks after the conventions in a public feud with the family of a Muslim American soldier who died in Iraq. The soldier’s parents criticized Trump at the Democratic convention, and Trump took a number of swipes back. “I think Trump lost voters with his bad choices and bad words,” Rendell said.

Biden bashed Trump for “slandering” the Gold Star family and argued that the GOP nominee is the most unprepared and unqualified person to run for the presidency on national security matters. Trump gave a foreign policy speech in neighboring Ohio later in the day.

Urging the crowd to listen to him in silence, Biden said Trump had already made the country less safe by his candidacy alone. “I can say that no major-party nominee in the history of the United States of America has known less or been less prepared to deal with national security than Donald Trump,” he said. “And what absolutely amazes me is he doesn’t seem to want to learn it.”

Biden also said Clinton knows what it feels like to be a parent who has to say no to a child’s needs because of money. “She gets it. She understands,” he repeated during the Monday rally.

Some who attended the rally were watching the race closely and had their own theories about why Trump had plunged in the polls. “Trump doesn’t shut up,” said Matt Cordier, a former supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders who now backs Clinton. Cordier drove nearly two hours from Harrisburg, Pa., so his 4-year-old daughter Annika could see Clinton and Biden in Scranton.

Cordier’s father-in-law, William Cole, an independent voter and retired maintenance worker, said trade is an important issue to him and that he is leaning toward voting for Clinton in November.

“It’s a torn issue between letting free trade and having our workforce underbid by other countries,” Cole said. “I don’t have the answer to the middle ground on that.”

Trump is apparently refusing to believe the shift in the polls. On Friday he said that he will lose in Pennsylvania only if there’s “cheating” on Election Day. “The only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this, Pennsylvania, is if cheating goes on. I really believe it,” Trump said Friday at a rally in Altoona, Pa., the Hill reported. “The only way they can beat it, in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, is if in certain sections of the state they cheat.”