President Biden speaks in Philadelphia last October.
Photographer: Bastiaan Slabbers/AP PhotoCan Biden Convince Americans His Brand of Populism Is Better Than Trump’s?
Whichever version wins in November will have lasting effects on the country, according to an exclusive excerpt from The Rebels.
If the 2024 presidential race shapes up, as expected, to be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the outcome is likely to be determined in places like Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.
A working-class steel town in a critical swing state, Aliquippa is the sort of place both Trump and Biden like to idealize as quintessentially American—a once-powerful engine of the midcentury industrial economy that fell on hard times after its iconic steelworks shuttered in the 1980s. Presidential candidates love campaigning in such places, because the blighted backdrops lend themselves to the claim that renewal is at hand, if only voters make the right choice. Aliquippa is the kind of place Trump promised to make “great again” and Biden vowed to revitalize.