(AP) — The Democratic Party’s most powerful voices warned Saturday that abortion, Social Security and democracy itself are at risk as they labored to overcome fierce political headwinds — and an ill-timed misstep from President Joe Biden — over the final weekend of the 2022 midterm elections.
“Sulking and moping is not an option,” former President Barack Obama told several hundred voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh. “On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years.”
Later in the day, Biden shared the stage with Obama in Philadelphia, the former running mates campaigning together for the first time since Biden took office. In neighboring New York, even former President Bill Clinton, largely absent from national politics in recent years, was out defending his party.
The trio of Democrats were the first presidents, but not last, to speak out on Saturday as voters across America decide control of Congress and key statehouses. Former President Donald Trump finished the day at a rally in working-class southwestern Pennsylvania, describing the election in apocalyptic terms. “If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, then on Tuesday you must vote Republican in a giant red wave,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters, describing the United States as “a country in decline.”
Biden, Trump, Obama and Clinton — four of the six living presidents — focused on Northeastern battlegrounds on Saturday, but their words echoed across the country as the parties sent out their best to deliver a critical closing argument. Polls across America will close on Tuesday, but more than 36 million people have already voted.
Not everyone, it seemed, was on message Saturday.
Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favor of green energy. While he made the comments in California the day before, the fossil fuel industry is a major employer in Pennsylvania.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology. He called Biden’s comments “offensive and disgusting.” Trump seized on the riff in western Pennsylvania, charging that Biden “has resumed the war on coal, your coal.”
The White House said Biden’s words were “twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense” and that he was “commenting on a fact of economics and technology.”
Democrats are deeply concerned about their narrow majorities in the House and Senate as voters sour on Biden’s leadership amid surging inflation, crime concerns and widespread pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests that Democrats, as the party in power, will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
Clinton addressed increasing fears about rising crime as he stumped for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose election is at risk even in deep-blue New York. He blamed Republicans for focusing on the issue to score political points.
