California Gov. Gavin Newsom sought to motivate Bucks County Democrats Saturday in a speech that lauded President Joe Biden’s achievements in his first term as he takes on former President Donald Trump in November, but made little mention of growing concerns over the president’s age and competency.
“We are going to save democracy and bring back Biden and Harris for four more years,” he proclaimed.
Newsom headlined a rally in Doylestown Saturday morning, speaking alongside local elected officials to a crowd of Democrats in the swing county who came out to support Biden in the middle of a heat wave on a holiday weekend.
Each speaker focused on the danger a second Trump presidency posed to the nation through potential abuses of power and diminished rights for women and LGBTQ Americans.
“Donald Trump is not only the worst president in American history, he is a damaged human being,” Bucks County Democratic Party chair and State Sen. Steve Santarsiero said.
Newsom framed the race as a choice between “chaos and competence” and warned attendees that Trump would return the United States to “a pre-1960s world.”
“You are the front lines of that opposition,” he said.
On the sidewalk outside the event Trump supporters gathered with signs and flags deriding Biden and telling Newsom to go home.
The visit comes as Biden faces a rough patch in his campaign. The president’s disastrous performance last month in his first debate against Trump left Democrats panicking as many questioned whether the 81-year-old president was capable of serving a second term in office.
In the days since, the campaign has been unable to tamp down panic among Democrats as some in the party have called for him to suspend his campaign and more have expressed concerns about his mental state and ability to beat Trump in November.
Dana Rollins, a Langhorne resident who attended the rally, said he believed Biden is the best person to take on Trump in “this moment in time.” The conversations about shifting candidates, he said, are a result of the party being a diverse group that holds a lot of voices.
“This is a process that we’re having to go through to try to put the strongest nominee forward and to be able to defeat Donald Trump,’ he said.
“I believe that this organization, the Democratic organization, will come to the right answer,” Rollins added.
The Newsom stop comes as Biden is in the midst of his own critical set of campaign events, a stop in Wisconsin Friday and scheduled stops in Philadelphia and Harrisburg on Sunday as well as an interview that aired Friday on ABC.
According to the New York Times, Biden has acknowledged these events could be critical to his ability to salvage his campaign. A poll from The Times showed Biden had lost ground against Trump following the debate.
Newsom, the 56-year-old second-term governor, has fiercely defended Biden even as his own name has been floated as a possible replacement candidate.
Speaking to reporters after the rally, Newsom rejected the idea that he would run if Biden stepped aside and spoke highly of Biden’s continued candidacy.
“To me it’s the hypothetical that gets in the way of progress in terms of promoting this candidacy,” Newsom said. “It’s exactly where the other party wants us to be, having this internal fight.”
Newsom has made numerous stops in swing states to show that support, including a stop in Michigan on Thursday and Pittsburgh on Friday. He is scheduled to visit another Philadelphia suburb, Chester County, on Saturday evening.
The Philadelphia suburbs, and Bucks County in particular, are critical to Democrats if they want to win Pennsylvania, and the presidency. Bucks County is the only county in the area represented by a Republican in Congress but its voters chose Biden over Trump in 2020.
In an interview Friday, Bucks County Republican Committee Chairwoman Pat Poprick criticized the campaign’s choice to bring Newsom, the governor of one of America’s most liberal states, to a moderate county.
“We are not that liberal, we are not that far out,” Poprick said. “I think it’s very telling that they think that’s going to help them in Bucks County.”
Though national polling in the wake of the debate has shown problems for Biden, Newsom told reporters the battle will ultimately be fought on the margins in places like Bucks County.
“Yesterday was a good day and we all want to see more of that,” Newsom said when asked whether Biden was doing enough to prove he was up for the job. “That’s what campaigns are about, get the surrogates out there, get the party faithful out there. It’s a bottom-up not top-down campaign. It’s county by county at the end of the day.”