President Biden’s latest trip to Philly illustrates his 2024 campaign strategy — and challenges

President Joe Biden was back in Philadelphia Monday on an afternoon that in many ways previewed his 2024 campaign.

Three scenes from his visit — his ninth to the city this year — provided a snapshot of Biden’s campaign strategy and some of his looming challenges as he readies for a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump next year.

Biden spoke to firefighters in Francisville, where he touted federal grant money that will help staff and equip the department. It was part of an ongoing attempt by the campaign to connect his administration’s legislative achievements to tangible outcomes voters can support, particularly among working-class and union voters.

He also addressed a banquet room of prominent Philadelphia donors and well-known politicians, from whom he needs financial backing and for whom he framed the stakes of his campaign as an inflection point for American democracy.

“It’s good to be almost home,” Biden told about 100 donors at the Hilton on Penn’s Landing. “The truth of the matter is, you guys in Philadelphia have been the backbone of my campaign since I started.”

Outside the fundraiser, hundreds of protesters gathered with signs condemning Biden’s refusal to back a cease-fire in Gaza, the latest outcry from a group dissatisfied with him, as he tries to hang onto the fragile coalition of voters that elected him in 2020.

As Biden’s motorcade flew down Columbus Boulevard after the event, hundreds of protesters chanted: “Cease-fire, now!” and “We’ll remember in November.”

Biden saluted the assembled firefighters at Ladder 1 as he entered the small brick firehouse at 16th and Parrish Streets.

He was there to announce a $22.4 million federal grant that will recommission several fire companies in the city — including a ladder truck that would have been first to respond to the 2022 Fairmount fire had it been in operation.

The fire, believed to have started when a 5-year-old ignited a Christmas tree, killed 12 people, including 9 children.

“God only knows if we’d been able to get there that much earlier and save lives,” Biden told the group of firefighters and politicians. “This neighborhood now has a ladder truck on call.”

As Biden looks ahead to 2024, he’s trying to hold on to union and working-class voters that have historically powered the Democratic Party but that Trump has threatened to siphon away since 2016.

Speakers touted Biden’s support for firefighters over the years, and Biden took the opportunity to lean into his working-class upbringing. He told the group that where he grew up in Claymont, Del., all his friends became cops, firefighters, or priests. “And here I am,” he said to chuckles.

It was also a moment for Biden to show he’d delivered on a promise. After the Fairmount blaze, the local union president Mike Bresnan called him and pleaded for federal money to get the truck and others back online.

A year after that call, Biden got to stand by while firefighters lifted a ladder onto the truck to symbolize its official return to service.

The grant will also bring two other companies back — Engine 6 in Fishtown and Ladder 11 in South Philadelphia — and fund 72 firefighters’ salaries and benefits for the next three years.

“God made man, but he also made a few firefighters,” Biden said. “Being a firefighter isn’t what you do, it’s ... who the hell you are,” he said, punching each word for emphasis.

The head of the International Association of Fire Fighters union was the first major labor group to endorse him during the 2020 campaign, though it has yet to announce what it will do in 2024.

As donors nibbled on salads at the Hilton, Biden thanked them for their support and warned of the existential threat he said Trump posed to democracy.

“Let me be clear, Donald Trump poses many threats in this country, from the right to choose, to civil rights, to voting rights, America’s standing in the world,” Biden said, echoing his 2020 campaign theme. ”... The greatest threat he poses is for our democracy, because if we lose that, we lose everything.”

As polling has shown Biden trailing or running close with Trump in key swing states like Pennsylvania, he’s amped up his direct criticisms of the former president, who has, for his part, outlined a radical second-term agenda.

Biden pointed to comments Trump has made about being a dictator on day one to shrink the size of the federal government.

“He says he’s not running to serve the people of America, he says he’s running to get, quote, revenge and retribution,” Biden said.

The full breadth of the Democratic Party has stood behind Biden even as public polling shows the majority of Americans want an option other than him or Trump. Monday’s crowd demonstrated his strong party support in Philadelphia, where the room included Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Govs. Tom Wolf and Ed Rendell; Sen. Chris Coons (D., Delaware); and U.S. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Madeleine Dean, both Pennsylvania Democrats.

The hosts — Ken Jarin, former State Sen. Connie Williams, philanthropist and attorney Leslie Anne Miller, and Rendell — are fundraising heavyweights in Philadelphia who helped power Biden’s last campaign. His reelection bid is predicted to be one of the most expensive in history.

Biden noted that Philadelphia will in three years celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

“I don’t believe and I will not believe that after all this nation has been through, … I don’t believe that on our 250th anniversary, this nation will turn to Donald Trump,” he said. “Folks, imagine, imagine that moment and ask, ‘What do we want to be?’”

Outside the Hilton, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the cold on Columbus Boulevard and chanted loudly.

“History will recall Biden did nothing at all,” hundreds chanted.

The protesters — well over 300 by midafternoon — included parents, children, and students, many of whom said they had taken off work or school to condemn Biden and urge him once again to back a cease-fire.

As Biden and the White House have remained firm in opposition to a cease-fire, criticism from within the Democratic Party has grown louder.

The war in Gaza has divided Democrats, who polling shows are more enthusiastic about Biden’s overall job performance than his handling of the war. The conflict has become the biggest foreign policy issue of the moment for the president.

The crowd on Monday greeted Biden with a disparaging nickname — “Genocide Joe,” describing him as complicit in Israel’s killing of more than 18,200 Palestinians, according to the latest update provided by the Gaza Health Ministry on Monday. The ministry maintains about 70% of those killed have been women and children.”

“As we speak, Israel drops American-made bombs purchased with our taxpayer dollars,” Nada Abuasi, an organizer with the activist network Philly Palestine Coalition, told the crowd. “Our hearts are heavy with loss … and we are disgusted with the gross complicity of Biden’s administration.”

Their message was clear: If the president did not dramatically shift his support for the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and call for a humanitarian cease-fire as the war enters its third month, he would lose their support in next year’s presidential race. Democratic voters have echoed that ultimatum in other swing states that helped elevate Biden in 2020, like Michigan, which is home to a large Arab American population.

Several speakers at the rally noted Philadelphia’s significance for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and warned that his support would continue to dwindle as the humanitarian crisis intensifies.

Protest signs that bobbed overhead gestured back to Biden’s campaign promises that year: “Joe Biden campaigned on humanity and empathy,” one read. “Where is that now?”