With under a week to go until Election Day, the presidential candidates have been scrambling to make their pitches to every potential voter they possibly can, in every state they can. Of course, they have to have priorities so they’ll visit the states that need a boost the most.
One of the bigger surprises in 2020 is that polling has put Georgia, a state that has historically voted for Republican candidates, as a battleground, with the candidates much closer than history would suggest.
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And so, former VP Joe Biden found himself in the Peach State addressing voters in a final bid to sway their minds.
To be clear, no Democratic presidential candidate has won Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992.
For Biden and Trump to even be polling at a statistical tie in Georgia, as the Financial Times reported was the case, underscores what a different year 2020 is.
But to make his pitch to Georgia voters, Biden chose a fitting setting: Warm Springs, the site where FDR recovered from polio, and which he referred to as his “Little White House.”
Just as FDR had healed at Warm Springs, Biden brought a message of healing as well.
The former VP pledged to be a president for all Americans who would seek to bridge a worsening divide, acknowledging that “anger and suspicion is growing and our wounds are getting deeper.”
Saying that the 2020 election has put the “soul of the nation” at stake, Biden said that “I believe this election is about who we are as a nation, what we believe, and maybe most importantly, who we want to be. It’s about our essence; it’s about what makes us Americans. It’s that fundamental,” CNN reported.
Throughout his address, Biden portrayed himself as the more rational and moral candidate, as he has long done in his campaign.
Biden said he would be “a president who’s in it not for himself, but for others. A president who doesn’t divide us — but unites us. A president who appeals not to the worst in us — but to the best,” NBC News reported.
“A president who cares less about his TV ratings — and more about the American people. A president who looks not to settle scores — but to find solutions. A president guided not by wishful thinking — but by science, reason and fact.”
Biden also acknowledged the importance of Georgia in the coming election.
“We win Georgia, we win everything,” he told a crowd later in the day at a drive-in rally in Atlanta, according to CNN . “Folks, I think we are going to surprise the living devil out of everybody this year.”
Noting that the battle for the state’s two Senate seats was just as close and important as the presidential race, Biden told the crowd that “There’s no state more consequential than Georgia in that fight. You have two competitive races here at stake.”
Biden didn’t pass up the opportunity to attack President Trump over the pandemic, however.
As Trump has continually suggested the nation is “turning the corner” on the COVID-19 pandemic despite record case numbers and overflowing hospitals in several states, Biden focused on the damage already done.
“The tragic truth of our time is that COVID has left a deep and lasting wound in this country,” he said, according to AP News , saying that the president has “shrugged. He’s swaggered. And he’s surrendered.”
“We can and we will control this virus,” he added, CNN reported. “As president, I will never wave the white flag of surrender.”
h/t: CNN , NBC News , AP News , Financial Times
