President Barack Obama has remained behind-the-scenes for the majority of the presidential election, instead leaving it to his former vice president, Joe Biden, to make his case to the American people. Obama has been featured in email fundraisers to supporters and even in-person fundraisers.
With a little more than two weeks until Election Day, President Obama is hitting the campaign trail to support Biden. The campaign's hope is that Obama's endorsement and events will send undecided voters Biden's way.
In fact, the campaign is in dire straits in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where Biden was born and raised. It's why Obama will hold a campaign event in Philadelphia.
From ABC News:
In choosing Pennsylvania as the state where Obama will make his reemergence back onto the physical campaign trail, Biden's team is also signaling how critical it thinks the Keystone State will be to unseating Trump, who carried it by just under 45,000 votes in 2016.
The former president has not campaigned in-person in key battlegrounds states so far, largely due to the greatly reduced in-person footprint the former vice president's team has stuck to amid the ongoing pandemic.
Despite the pared-back on-the-ground presence, Democrats have remained eager to include the widely popular Obama in their messaging as they look to increase turnout, especially with most states already in the process of voting.
The state's swing towards President Trump isn't all that surprising. Biden has said he would ban fracking, which would put more than 300,000 people out of jobs, the Pocono Record reported.
Obama can stump for Biden in Pennsylvania but it won't suddenly make the blow of losing hundreds of thousands of jobs any less painful.