“We have too bright a future to have it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate and division,” Joe Biden said in a speech near the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivered an impassioned call for national unity on Tuesday from the swing state of Pennsylvania, casting the nation as a “house divided” and the election as a high-stakes contest defined by seismic issues of life-or-death consequence that, he argued, should transcend traditional partisan disagreements.
In a 22-minute speech outdoors in Gettysburg, near the Civil War battlefield that serves as a symbol of a country split against itself, Mr. Biden drew parallels between that dark time in American history and the turmoil of the current moment, saying the country was again in “a battle for the soul of the nation,” reprising a central theme of his candidacy four weeks before Election Day.
“You don’t have to agree with me on everything, or even on most things,” Mr. Biden said, to see that what “we’re experiencing today is neither good nor normal.”
In his remarks, Mr. Biden sought to present himself as a bipartisan figure, eager to paint the most searing issues of the day — the coronavirus, racial injustice, economic crises — as American challenges, rather then problems that should be viewed through a political lens. The message was a striking contrast with the actions on Tuesday of Mr. Biden’s opponent, President Trump, who ended talks with Democrats about an economic stimulus bill even as millions of Americans struggle with the financial fallout of the pandemic.
“This pandemic is not a red-state or blue-state issue,” Mr. Biden said. The virus “doesn’t care,” he added, “where you live, what political party you belong to. It affects us all. It will take anyone’s life. It’s a virus — it’s not a political weapon.”
He did not mention his opponent by name, though he delivered an implicit indictment of Mr. Trump’s handling of the virus and suggested that the president had stoked an environment where hate thrives — an argument he has made far more directly on many other occasions.
Still, Mr. Biden was defiant in expressing belief in reaching out to Republicans even at a moment of staggering political polarization, a view that has drawn skepticism from many in his party. And he pointed to American traumas of the past — in particular the Civil War — both as a warning and as evidence that the country is capable of overcoming even the most corrosive divisions.
“Today, once again, we are a house divided, but that, my friends, can no longer be,” Mr. Biden said, invoking Abraham Lincoln. “We are facing too many crises, we have too much work to do, we have too bright a future to have it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate and division.”
Later, in a statement released after his address, he denounced Mr. Trump — this time by name — for abruptly ending the economic stimulus talks with Democrats, saying that the president had “never even really tried to get a deal” for all of the Americans who were suffering financially.
“Make no mistake: If you are out of work, if your business is closed, if your child’s school is shut down, if you are seeing layoffs in your community, Donald Trump decided today that none of that — none of it — matters to him,” Mr. Biden said. In a tweet, he said bluntly: “The President turned his back on you.”
Though it is perhaps too soon for the address to amount to a closing argument in the 2020 campaign, his remarks suggested that he intends to end his bid for the White House as he began it: by framing the election as a national emergency whose outcome will determine the trajectory and the character of the country for years to come.
Nodding to the latest chaos fueled by Mr. Trump — this time the president’s cavalier attitude toward the coronavirus despite being sickened by it himself — Mr. Biden, whose campaign said he had again tested negative for the virus on Tuesday, built on his longstanding arguments about the need for calm and for the possibility of finding common ground.
“As I look across America today, I’m concerned,” Mr. Biden said. “The country is in a dangerous place. Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope seems elusive.”
Too many Americans, he said, are engaged in “total, unrelenting, partisan warfare.”
“Instead of treating each other’s party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy,” he said. “This must end. We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country, the spirit of being able to work with one another.” And, echoing a message he delivered in Pittsburgh last month, Mr. Biden sought to strike a balance between empathizing with and encouraging protesters of racial injustice, while condemning any episodes of violence, aiming to nullify a baseless Republican claim that Mr. Biden is radically anti-law enforcement.
“I do not believe we have to choose between law and order and racial justice in America,” he said.
The speech was in many ways a culmination of the messages Mr. Biden has pressed at key inflection points throughout the presidential campaign, including at the Democratic National Convention and at his first large-scale rally of the campaign, in Philadelphia last spring.
But if Mr. Biden was aiming to win over Republican voters in this swing state, he had limited reason for hope. In Pennsylvania, just 15 percent of likely G.O.P. voters expressed a positive view of Mr. Biden, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week.
But among independent voters in the Keystone State, he is viewed more favorably: 54 percent see him positively, while 44 percent see him negatively. There have been some signs throughout the campaign of Mr. Biden’s ability to connect with the kinds of Americans who voted third-party in 2016 because they disliked both presidential candidates at the time.
Nationwide, there was some evidence of Mr. Biden building more support in the wake of last week’s debate — but not much of it coming from Republicans or conservatives. A CNN poll conducted after the debate was the first all year to show a majority of Americans expressing a positive view of Mr. Biden. That was in large part because of a nine-point uptick over the past month in the share of women rating him positively. Among Republicans, his favorability rating was basically unchanged: Just 12 percent expressed a favorable opinion.
Earlier on Tuesday, at the end of a virtual fund-raising event, Mr. Biden said he had “worked and worked and worked on” the speech and indicated it would be about “the soul of America and racial equality and what significant trouble we’re in right now.”
“Some people may think it’s a little dramatic, but I think it’s appropriate,” he said. “We have to unite this nation and I’ve decided to do it from Gettysburg. I’ve worked on this speech very, very, very hard.”
His trip to Gettysburg came as he sought to press his advantage over Mr. Trump, who trails in polls and remains confined to the White House.
Mr. Biden, who has heeded the advice of experts and been cautious about holding in-person events in recent months, prompting mockery from Mr. Trump, is now the candidate who is out on the campaign trail, albeit still with small, socially distanced events that adhere to public health guidelines.
His Pennsylvania trip followed a visit to Florida on Monday and preceded a planned trip on Thursday to Arizona. Mr. Biden is maintaining leads or pulling away from Mr. Trump in polls in all three states.
Mr. Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he planned to attend the presidential debate scheduled for Oct. 15, even as he remains infectious and doctors have warned that the course of his illness is unpredictable. In a tweet on Monday, he also indicated plans to return to the campaign trail soon.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump shared the debate stage in Cleveland a week ago, and Mr. Biden’s campaign said he had tested negative for the coronavirus twice on Friday and again on Sunday, before news of the Tuesday test.
FEATURED IMAGE: Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has a growing polling lead over President Trump in Pennsylvania, speaking in Gettysburg on Tuesday. “Today, once again, we are a house divided, but that, my friends, can no longer be,” he said. Hilary Swift for The New York Times
By Sydney Ember and Katie Glueck/The New York Times
