The last time former vice president Joe Biden was in Iowa, his campaign appeared to be on life support after being trounced in the Iowa Caucuses back in February by Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
On Friday, Biden returned to the Hawkeye State as the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead in many national polls, to make the case to Iowans for why he deserves the highest office in the land. "Back at the state fair!" Biden quipped upon taking the stage.
It was one of three states the former vice president visited on Friday. He’s also swinging through Wisconsin and Minnesota, trying to shore up support in the so-called "blue wall" states of the Midwest – President Trump snatched narrow, surprise victories in two of those key Midwestern states, Wisconsin and Michigan, in 2016.
Here's some of what Biden said as he hit the campaign trail with days left until the election:
10:00 p.m. EDT
Wearing a mask and speaking to a socially distanced crowd, Biden slammed Trump for his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Donald Trump waved the white flag, surrendered to the virus," Biden said. "Unlike Donald Trump, we're not going to surrender to this virus."
"The thing that bothers me the most was the president who gave up," Biden added, saying that Trump "devastated the Wisconsin dairy industry," in addition to causing trade wars and mass layoffs.
"Harley-Davidson slashed 800 manufacturing jobs, repurchased stock," Biden said, "and then shifted some of its production overseas. So much for helping."
It was a starkly different scene from the president's rally earlier in the day, where Trump spoke to a crowd of thousands of people in Green Bay, but dueling campaign rallies across the state in the same day emphasized the battleground nature of Wisconsin.
Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, which was previously a reliable part of the Democratic "blue wall" in the Midwest, but a recent polling average from FiveThirtyEight shows Biden leading the president.
6:00 p.m. EDT
Joe Biden was joined by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar in St. Paul on Friday evening, both of whom used their time to hammer home a potentially election-determining message: Minnesotans who have yet to send in their absentee ballots should forgo the mail and drop their ballots off in person.
The message came on the heels of an appeals court ruling that indicated that mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day are at risk of being invalidated. On Thursday, a court ruled that Minnesota absentee ballots arriving after Election Day should be separated from other ballots in case they are later invalidated by a final court order.
The ruling doesn’t impact ballots received by the time polls close on Election Day, but sets the stage for post-election litigation. The case was sent back to a lower court for more proceedings.
“We know the Republicans are trying until the very last minute to stop our votes from being counted. To stop Minnesotans from voting.” Klobuchar said. “But are you going to let two Republican electors in some lawsuit stop our people from voting? No.”
“Don’t mail it in: bring it to a drop box,” Klobuchar said, speaking to the hundreds of thousands of people with absentee ballots.
As of Thursday night, nearly 400,000 of some 2 million requested absentee ballots remained outstanding, state officials said.
Republicans have tried to block voter expansion across the country, and the Minnesota decision comes as similar extensions have gone before the U.S. Supreme Court with mixed results.
Biden reiterated the importance of making a plan to either drop-off absentee ballots or vote in person up through election day.
“If you want your voice to be heard, drop off your ballot, don't put it in the mail,” Biden said. “You've got to get it done, and make sure everyone you know votes as well. So they won't be able to stop us, despite Trump’s efforts.”
Outside of Biden’s rally was a sizable crowd who gathered in support of President Trump, many using horns throughout the duration of the former vice president’s address.
“These guys are not very polite, but they're like Trump," Biden said of the crowd.
The crowd of protesters continued to grow over the course of the event, even being joined by GOP senate candidate Jason Lewis. Lewis tweeted a call for enough Trump supporters to show up at Biden’s rally that they would “shut it down.”
Biden intermittently acknowledged the protesters at his event, at one point saying: “Dr. Fauci called for a mask mandate last week. This isn’t a political statement like those ugly folks over there beeping the horns. This is a patriotic duty, for God’s sake.”
"Honk your horn if you want America to lead again. Honk your horn if you want Americans to trust each other again," Biden said during his closing remarks.
2:30 p.m. EDT
During his first stop at a drive-in rally in Des Moines, Biden also made sure to offer his support for down-ballot Democrats running statewide, saying Iowa has a real chance to help flip the senate back to blue.
Biden poked fun at Iowa’s Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican facing a tougher-than-expected challenge from Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield. Several weeks ago, a debate between the candidates went viral after Ernst failed to answer a question about the statewide break-even price of corn — one of the state’s most profitable agricultural exports.
“That’s like my not knowing where the Delaware River is back home,” Biden said of Ernst’s debate-night gaffe.
“You have no idea how much you're going to make my night when you win,” Biden continued, addressing Greenfield directly, adding: “Theresa and I both lost our first spouses. We’ve both been single parents to kids. We’ve both found our way back from broken places and we know — that’s why you should elect this woman."
The former vice president then turned his attention to his own opponent, hammering President Trump for his failure to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The address was especially timely considering Iowa had 2,621 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, one of the highest single-day totals recorded so far. The daily positive case numbers average more than 1,700 a day for the past week. An additional 14 deaths raised the state’s death total to 1,705.
“We’ve now hit 9 million cases nationwide, a tragic milestone," Biden said. "Millions of people are out of work, on the edge."
“And they can’t see the light, it just looks dark right now for them," Biden added.
“The Iowa State fair was canceled for the first time since World War II — and Donald Trump has given up,” Biden said in a direct bid to Iowans, before repeating one of his most-used attack lines against the president: “We’re not learning how to live with it (COVID), we’re learning how to die from it.”
The former vice president finished with a plea to attendees to excersize their right to vote.
"I believe when you use your power, the power of a vote, we're going to change the course of the country and, quite frankly, the world," he said.
Earlier
Biden’s trip reflects the growing confidence among Democrats in the closing days of the campaign. Iowa, which Donald Trump won by 9 points in 2016, is among the clutch of Republican-leaning states that Biden is trying to bring back into the Democratic column.
Trump, meanwhile, is also making a Midwest swing Friday, playing defense in Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump and Biden will both be in Minnesota, a longtime Democratic state that the president is trying to flip red.
When asked if he was stopping in Minnesota due to concern he might lose the state, Biden told reporters Friday, “no, I’m not concerned. Were gonna be in Wisconsin, so I thought I’d stop in Minnesota."
"I don’t take anything for granted, Biden said. "We’re gonna work for every single vote up til the last minute.”
In another show of confidence, Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, will be courting voters in Texas Friday, making multiple stops in the longtime Republican bastion that Democrats insist is in play this year
The arc of Biden’s rise is eclipsed only by the challenges faced by Trump — whose confidence in his reelection was dealt a devastating blow by the coronavirus pandemic this spring, with the public health and economic crises still rearing their heads in the days leading up to the close of polling.
With four days until the election and more than 80 million votes already cast, time is running out for Trump and Biden to change the shape of the race. Biden is leading most national polls and has a narrow advantage in the critical battlegrounds that could decide the race.
That’s why both men zeroed in on Florida on Thursday. While Biden has a path to victory without the critical battleground state, Trump’s reelection bid would almost certainly be blocked if he loses there.
“If Florida goes blue, it’s over,” Biden told supporters Thursday.
Friday marks the beginning of the critical final stretch before the election. Trump’s closing sprint to Election Day also includes three stops in Pennsylvania on Saturday and nearly a dozen events in the final 48 hours across states he carried in 2016.
After Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota on Friday, Biden will hit Michigan on Saturday, where he’ll hold a joint rally with former President Barack Obama.
Biden has held fewer events in a nod to the restrictions in place across the country to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The virus has killed more than 228,000 people in the United States, and cases are surging across the country, threatening an economic recovery Trump had aimed to champion.
Trump on Thursday celebrated a new federal estimate that the economy grew at a stunning 33.1% annual rate in the July-September quarter — by far the largest quarterly gain on record — making up ground from its epic plunge in the spring, when the eruption of the coronavirus closed businesses and threw tens of millions of people out of work.
“So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd,” Trump tweeted, predicting a dire reversal if Biden is elected.
But economists warned that the economy is already weakening again and facing renewed threats as confirmed viral cases surge, hiring has slowed and federal stimulus help has mostly run out.
Biden said, “The recovery is slowing if not stalling, and the recovery that is happening is helping those at the top but leaving tens of millions of working families and small businesses behind.”
Trump is banking on local news coverage of his rallies to overcome a substantial advertising deficit stemming from a late cash crunch. Biden and his allies are outspending Trump and his backers by a more than 3-1 ratio in Florida — about $23 million to about $7 million — in the final push to Election Day, according to data from ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.
Biden, meanwhile, is pouring tens of millions of dollars into a torrent of online advertising that will deliver his closing message of the presidential campaign, highlighting his promise to govern for all Americans while blasting Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I will work as hard for those who don’t support me as those who do,” Biden says in one of the digital ads, which took over the masthead of YouTube Thursday. “That’s the job of a president — the duty to care for everyone.”
How much exactly Biden will spend is unclear. His campaign says it is putting a “mid-eight-figure” dollar amount behind over 100 different ads, which means they could be spending as little as $25 million — but potentially much more.
The ads will run on social media platforms including Instagram and Facebook, streaming services such as Hulu and music applications like Pandora.
The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, launched its closing message to voters Thursday, not mentioning Trump, in an apparent aim to help GOP candidates up and down the ballot with a focus on traditional Republican messages around lowering taxes and health care.
The aftereffects of Hurricane Zeta were holding back voters at a number of polling places in northern Florida and northern Georgia that lost power. In Douglas County, in Atlanta’s western suburbs, all six polling locations were without power, as were county offices.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.