OTTUMWA, Iowa — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden[1] on Tuesday made his second trip as a presidential candidate to Iowa ahead of its first-in-the-nation caucus, seeking to erase any lingering doubts about his ability to unite the party and take out President Trump in the 2020 election.
The significance of the trip was magnified by polling that raised serious questions about Mr. Biden[2]’s star power here and by the fact that Mr. Trump was also making a series of stops in Iowa, marking the first time in the 2020 campaign season that the two men were campaigning in the same state on the same day.
Mr. Biden[3] sought to take advantage of that narrative, telling audiences and the crush of media following him that Mr. Trump is an “existential threat to America.”
“I think he is genuinely a threat to our core values and a threat to our standing in the world,” Mr. Biden[4] told a crowd at an event center on the banks of the Des Moines River. “Four years of Donald Trump will be viewed as an aberration in American history. Eight years, eight years, will fundamentally change who we are as a nation and how we are viewed around the world.”
A Des Moines Register/CNN poll released over the weekend showed Mr. Biden[5]’s lead has shrunk and his supporters are less enthusiastic about their preferred pick than voters that have lined up behind some of his challengers.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden[6] touted the importance of Iowa, which kicks off the nomination process, and dismissed the early surveys here.
“They don’t mean a thing right now,” Mr. Biden[7] said. “This is a marathon, this is a marathon, and the marathon is just beginning.”
Mr. Biden[8] once again steered clear of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination and zeroed in on Mr. Trump, saying this administration has dropped the ball when it comes to taxes, health care, climate change and trade.
“President Trump is in Iowa today and … I hope his presence here will be a clarifying event because Iowa farmers have been crushed by his tariff war with China and no one knows better than the folks in Iowa,” he said.
He said, “I think the president has made the wrong choices almost all along the line.”
Mr. Biden[9] called for raising the capital gains tax to pay for free community college and a tax credit for child care.The visit here is part of a two-day swing through blue-collar Iowa counties that flipped to Trump in 2016.
Ottumwa is the county seat of Wapello County, which Mr. Trump became the first Republican since Dwight Eisenhower to carry in a presidential election....