Biden talks about Trump's 'twin legacies' as supporters yell 'Black Lives Matter' outside
In the Lancaster courtyard where Joe Biden met with families who say they've benefited from the Affordable Care Act, loud, opposing chants could be heard in the distance.
"Four more years" and "USA" were being shouted by supporters of President Donald Trump. Louder calls came from supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement: "No justice, no peace, no racist police."
The groups outside were less than 100 yards away from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. They were out of sight, but their message was heard.
Biden, who was in southcentral Pennsylvania Thursday to talk to Lancaster County families about healthcare, didn't discuss what was going on outside. Instead, he focused on health care policy and the incumbent he's running against in November.
The former vice president said Trump's “twin legacies” are the “failure to protect the American people from coronavirus” and his “heartless crusade” to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
“The president wants us to believe there’s a choice between the economy and public health. Amazingly, he still hasn’t grasped the most basic fact of this crisis. To fix the economy, we have to get control over the virus," Biden said.
Biden met with three Pennsylvania families:
- Stacie Ritter, a Lancaster resident whose 22-year-old twins were diagnosed with cancer at the age of 4.
- Victoria Salerno, a Chester resident whose 4-year-old son has mitochondrial disease.
- Amy Raslevich, a Pittsburgh resident who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017. She is the mother of two children, Laura and Sam, who each have celiac disease.
They all described scenarios in which they would not have afforded the treatment they needed without President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul in 2010.
“We could have very easily been a family that was bankrupt," Raslevich said.
Salerno said her son, Cole, requires a special tube in his heart to survive mitochondrial disease. It costs $80,000 per month. The Affordable Care Act enabled her family to qualify for Medicaid to pay for life-saving treatment. Without it, her family was looking at bankruptcy, she said.
Ritter said she was also going bankrupt until the Affordable Care Act made it possible to use Medicaid benefits to pay for her twins' cancer treatments.
“One of the reasons I voted for you and President Obama in 2007 was he understood what it was like. My mom died of cancer at 52 years of age,” she said. “She put off going for care because she couldn’t afford it. By the time she went, it was too late. I knew after reading President Obama’s plan, he got it because of his mom.”
Biden leaned forward as he listened during his fourth visit to Pennsylvania this month.
The courtyard conversation came while Trump's case to end the Obama-era healthcare plan is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I don’t think people really fully understand that there’s 100 million people with pre-existing conditions," Biden said. "If the president wins this case, he keeps saying he’ll cover pre-existing conditions, but he hasn’t figured out any way it’s possible to do that absent what we’ve done.”
Ritter said she didn’t understand why Trump wanted to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
“Well, I don’t get it either,” Biden said. “The fact is.. the reason everybody kinda forgets why we allowed people to say on their parents plan until age 26 was because of the financial crisis. A whole generation lost access to good jobs, access to insurance. It made a gigantic difference for people.”
The Trump campaign offered a rebuttal:
“Pennsylvanians haven’t forgotten that healthcare premiums skyrocketed 120 percent due to Obamacare, and now Joe Biden supports a public option that many argue would pave the way for a government takeover of health care that would kick millions off their private insurance programs," Trump campaign spokeswoman Melissa Reed said. "Meanwhile, President Trump has lowered prescription drug costs and is expanding affordable options for all. The contrast couldn’t be clearer.”
Biden also talked about his healthcare experience with his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in May 2015.
“I used to sit there and wonder – this is God’s truth – what would have happened if he had made it for almost 17 months in real pain, if they said, suffer in peace now, you’ve outlived your coverage. I don’t know what the hell he would have done," Biden said.
The personal piece can get lost in the healthcare debate, but it really matters to people, he said.
Biden talked about strengthening the Affordable Care Act and then passing a public option to expand coverage.
“There’s a lot we can do, and I think the public’s willing to do it," he said.
Biden admitted he was worried that the Supreme Court would strike down the Affordable Care Act, but he was optimistic his proposals could become law if he’s elected.
The message outside
Black Lives Matter protesters held their ground on the street in front of the Lancaster Recreation Center as about a dozen police officers lined up in front of the building where Biden met with families.
The protesters demanded Biden come out and speak to them, intermittently chanting “No justice, no peace.”
A Lancaster County couple wearing Trump MAGA hats debated a few of the BLM protesters who asked them to explain themselves.
“What is your purpose for standing in front of a school for children saying you support Trump?” one woman asked them.
“He’s doing good things,” Robert Reed, a Lancaster resident said.
“The Dixie flag is equal to the Nazi flag,” another woman said.
Reed didn’t see a connection between Trump and racism, defending the president’s successes with Black employment and reduction of taxes.
“What happened with (George) Floyd is wrong, dead wrong,” Reed told one BLM protester who had thought the police presence in the city was an effort to protect white Trump supporters. He said he didn’t know Biden was in the city.
Before they left for home, Reed and his wife shook a few hands.
The BLM protest went on. At one point, they laid on the ground with their hands behind their backs, the position Floyd had been in when he died.
Peg Rettew-Cross live-streamed the scene from her yard, just a half block from the rec center. She has lived there for 20 years.
“I think it’s wonderful ... they can express their feelings in a way they want to,” she said. “Any and all lives matter. I’m just sure glad Biden is here because he will listen to them.”
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Why Lancaster?
While Biden was in Pennsylvania, Trump was in Wisconsin. Many contrasts can be drawn between the presumptive 2020 presidential nominees, but Biden and Trump both have chosen to focus their in-person campaign efforts in states that can help them win in November.
"It's battleground state time," said Terry Madonna, a pollster and political analyst at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.
Biden is visiting his native Pennsylvania for more than the easy proximity to his home state of Delaware, Madonna said.
The former vice president on June 2 delivered a speech in Philadelphia, on June 11 attended a roundtable in Philadelphia and on June 17 gave a speech in Darby.
"He's been here three times in June. That shows the importance of Pennsylvania. It's one of the top states that will determine the next president," Madonna said.
Other battleground states are Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, according to most political analysts. Arizona and North Carolina are also considered battleground states this year by many analysts.
Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes in 2016 and was the first Republican presidential nominee to win the state since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
When Democratic presidential nominee and frontrunner Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania in 2016, she was criticized for focusing too much on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. She made a few campaign stops in Harrisburg, but Clinton largely concentrated on the highly populated bookends of the state.
"Clinton did perfectly well enough in metro Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to win, but she got clobbered so badly outside the big urban areas that she narrowly lost the state to Trump," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Democrats seemed to have learned lessons of the past with Biden's visit to Lancaster County, Madonna said.
"Lancaster is still a Republican county to be sure, but overall Democrats have done better there and in southcentral Pennsylvania in recent years," he said.
Biden has a 6-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
"Biden's lead has grown in the battleground states, but his lead is not insurmountable," Madonna said.
Whatever inroads Biden can make in traditionally red counties like Lancaster will help him in November, he said.
"Democrats hope to cut down on the Republican edge," Madonna said.
A month ago, Biden's lead was 3 points ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania. Trump lost footing because of "his reaction to police reform and the George Floyd murder case," Madonna said.
Candy Woodall is a reporter for the USA Today Network. She can be reached at 717-480-1783 or on Twitter at @candynotcandace.