John Fetterman was getting ready to introduce Joe Biden at a campaign event less than 24 hours after the ugly first presidential debate. That Fetterman—the tattooed, goateed progressive who was elected lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania two years ago—is enthusiastically backing the centrist Democratic nominee is plenty significant, ideologically. More important, strategically, is where the two very different politicians would be appearing together: Johnstown, a small, scuffling city in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, in a county where four years ago Donald Trump crushed Hillary Clinton by nearly 38 points. Biden is unlikely to win Cambria County in November. But that’s not why he was there on Wednesday night.
“The idea isn’t that you’re going to suddenly turn Cambria blue, but we can’t lose by those margins,” Fetterman tells me. “Depending on the election cycle, Pennsylvania has more than 50 red counties. One specific county isn’t going to make a difference. But if you eat into his margins and stack up 50 counties on top of each other, that’s lethal to Trump’s ambitions in Pennsylvania. The key is jamming up Trump in the red counties.” That’s one theory, and it carries a good deal of weight with Biden’s campaign brain trust. Which is something that increasingly worries some allies of the Democratic nominee. “Look, I get it: The Biden campaign really wants to bring back those blue-collar Obama–Trump voters. They should want to do it. But those people are harder targets in a state like Pennsylvania,” a top national strategist says. “If you bump up African American turnout by 25, 30,000 votes in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, that’s the game. It’s over. We’re afraid the Biden campaign is doing what Hillary did and just taking those voters for granted.” A second strategist anxiously sees the possibility of a major miscalculation: “I think there’s this perception among the Biden campaign that they have [Barack] Obama. The problem is, you can’t have Obama doing giant rallies right now. A recorded video just isn’t going to do it for turnout. Remember in 2016, Hillary did that massive rally the night before the election in Philadelphia? Nothing like that is possible this time. And by the way, we lost the state anyway.”
For all the poll-driven media excitement about Biden possibly flipping solidly Republican presidential-election states like Georgia and Texas, the campaign is wisely maintaining its focus on the traditionally crucial swing states, with Pennsylvania at the top of the list: Biden’s visit there this week was his fifth since the Democratic convention, with Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan tied for second place at two. Fortunately, independent groups aren’t waiting for those limited-attendance public events featuring the candidate or deferring to the Democratic National Committee’s efforts; they’re acting on their own to help defeat Trump. On the big money side, the Lincoln Project will soon launch a large advertising and get-out-the-vote push in Philadelphia. Grassroots groups are also ramping up outreach, even if their affection for Biden is only lukewarm. Helen Gym, a Philadelphia community activist who won an at-large seat on the city council in 2016 by running on a proudly populist platform, is deeply involved in the progressive effort. “It doesn’t matter what the Biden campaign is doing—groups are mobilizing on the left, and statewide they’re united as PA Stands Up,” Gym says. “Many of these groups are absolutely ignored by both parties, but we’re moving at the local level, and we’re making hundreds of thousands of phone calls across the state. We have proven to be very effective at winning at the margins. People feel like we have a shot at fixing things under Biden. We have no shot under Trump.”
Early voting began on September 29 in Philadelphia. Gym says she’s seen lines of people waiting at polling places in Philadelphia neighborhoods such as Overbrook, which is predominantly Black. Maybe some were motivated by Trump’s winking support, during the debate, for white supremacist groups. Or perhaps it was the more general shot that Trump took at their hometown, when he claimed that “bad things happen in Philadelphia.” Gym laughs. “The only bad thing that is going to happen in Philadelphia for this president,” she says, “is that we’re gonna whip his butt.” Maybe the combination of official and outsider campaigning, and of rural and urban offensives, will be the exact right mix for Biden to win Pennsylvania. The risk is that the split surges instead allow Trump to once again do what he does best: divide and conquer.
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