Biden to visit Pittsburgh, Westmoreland County on Wednesday as part of train whistle-stop tour

Former Vice President Joe Biden will visit Western Pennsylvania by train Wednesday, fresh off his first in-person 2020 election debate against President Trump.

Locally, the Democratic nominee and his wife, Jill, will stop in Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Latrobe and New Alexandria. The tour is scheduled to culminate in a 7:30 p.m. rally in Johnstown.

“Vice President Biden will highlight how he will build our economy back better for working families, not the super wealthy and corporations,” the Biden campaign said in a statement.

Jill Biden is set to campaign on Tuesday in Michigan, prior to Joe Biden’s primetime faceoff against Trump in Cleveland, moderated by Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday.”

On Wednesday, both Bidens are set to board a train traveling through eastern Ohio into Western Pennsylvania.

Biden’s tentative tour schedule on Wednesday calls for the former vice president to make stops in Cleveland and Alliance, Ohio, and continue to a whistle-stop in Pittsburgh at 2:20 p.m., Greensburg at 3:45 p.m., New Alexandria at 4:30 pm and Latrobe at 5:20 p.m.

The tour with three stops in Westmoreland County — where President Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin in 2016 — underscores the battle for Pennsylvania. Trump has made five forays into Pennsylvania in as many weeks.

Although Trump scored a narrow 44,000 vote victory in the Keystone State in 2016, a recent Franklin & Marshall College poll showed Biden leading Trump by 6 percentage points among likely voters.

On Tuesday, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania 54 percent to Trump’s 45 percent among likely voters and 54 percent to 44 percent among registered voters. The Washington Post attributed the lead mainly to Biden’s “strong support in the Philadelphia suburbs and his competitiveness in the state’s western counties.”

Biden, whose campaign has shifted to mostly virtual events and minimal travel because of the pandemic, visited Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood Green former steel mill development Aug. 31.

At the limited-access event, Biden called Trump a “toxic presence” and condemned the violence at recent protests, while also blaming Trump for fomenting the divide that’s sparking civil unrest.

Shortly before Trump’s rally last week outside a hangar at Pittsburgh International Airport, Biden lashed out at Trump’s plan to push a Supreme Court appointment through the Senate before the election, saying the Affordable Care Act is on the line in the high court.

“The stakes of this election could not be higher,” Biden told the Trib last week. “To pull ourselves out of President Trump’s economic mess, we need a government with a plan to help communities like Pittsburgh, who built this country, recover and rebuild stronger.”

Trump, who won Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes out of more than 6 million cast in 2016, trails by about four points in recent polls. He visited Scranton on Aug. 20, Latrobe on Sept. 3, the Pittsburgh airport last Tuesday and led a rally in the Harrisburg area on Saturday.

Both candidates paid tribute to the victims and first responders of the 9/11 attacks at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville on Sept. 11.