PITTSBURGH — In September 1987, Jill Biden stood stoically beside her husband Joe at a press conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the then-senator from Delaware was being pressed by dozens of print and television reporters about his future after he was caught stealing other politicians’ words without giving them credit, embellishing his academic record, and for having plagiarized material in an article while a student at Syracuse Law School 20 years earlier.
John Ellement of the Boston Globe set the scene that day after Biden withdrew from the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, even as his defiant supporters were wearing campaign white buttons that read “92” in an effort to project that Biden would be back four years later.
Ellement reported that Biden seemed nonplussed that day, repeatedly called his indiscretions “mistakes” and told the press, “I think the totality of who I am has been slightly misrepresented, but I’m confident that time will take care of that,” adding, “I don’t think the public has all that much to forget.”
As the disgraced candidate was being pressed to explain how he could have repeatedly made those “mistakes,” his wife leaned over to her husband and suggested an answer.
“Tell them you’re only human,” she said.
Just under 37 years later, after Joe Biden eventually became president of the United States, Jill Biden is no longer that 36-year-old mother of a 6-year-old daughter and wife of a failed candidate for president, and she certainly isn’t stoic anymore.
Instead, the now-first lady has become a fiery, sometimes screeching, podium thumper for her husband whose “only human” limitations have once again placed the family in a limelight that is both humiliating and damaging to their legacy. She will bring that presence to Pittsburgh once again for the third time in just over a month, for a campaign event at an Italian Sons and Daughters of America dinner on Saturday.
It is no coincidence she will be in the same important Western Pennsylvania region speaking at the exact time former President Donald Trump will be holding a rally at the Butler County Farm Show complex, one hour northwest of Pittsburgh. Campaign events are all about contrasts.
The first lady, a Northern Virginia Community College professor of English, was here in June twice, first to begin the city’s Pride festivities and then for an “abortion-rights” event where she talked about preserving access to abortion in a state where it is legal up to 23 weeks. The pro-life Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision in 2022 had no effect on abortion access because of the way the law is written in Pennsylvania.
Despite calls for the president to drop out of his run for a second term after a telling debate performance two weeks ago laid bare the president’s frailty, something polls say that many voters have suspected for three years, the Bidens have shown stubborn resistance against a graceful exit. Biden watchers expect Jill Biden to keep being a fierce campaigner and cheerleader for her husband after an NPR/PBS News/Marist College national poll showed Friday morning that he and Trump remain neck and neck.
Local Democrats here expect her to make that argument Saturday, with one of them arguing they can hold their seats if Biden is still on the ticket.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Because Kamala Harris will not hold [those seats the way] he or Obama did in Western Pennsylvania,” he said. “She holds the same appeal Hillary Clinton did, which was none.”
Harris will also be in Pennsylvania on Saturday, speaking at the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote Presidential Town Hall in Philadelphia.