Joe Biden appeared to have won the first on-the ground duel of the coronavirus-hit US election after he and Donald Trump both descended on the battleground state of Wisconsin. For the first time both candidates travelled to the same place this week, visiting the flashpoint city of Kenosha where riots erupted after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man, seven times in the back. The events in Kenosha finally, after much internal discussion with his team, induced Mr Biden to hit the campaign trail. Had it not been for the pandemic he would have done so months ago. Instead, Mr Biden has spent most of his time recently conducting virtual events from his home in Delaware. Mr Trump had called him "Joe Hiden," and accused him of hiding in his basement. Mr Biden's first campaign visit to the Midwest came with only two months to go until the election, and lit the touchpaper for what will be a bruising fight in Wisconsin. Mr Trump won the state by less than one percentage point in 2016. It had voted Democrat since 1984. Four years ago he took Kenosha County, which has 160,000 people, by just 255 votes, or 0.3 per cent of the ballots cast. Republicans had privately accepted losing Wisconsin this time, but Mr Trump has refused to give it up. The president swooped into Kenosha on Tuesday and accused rioters of "domestic terror," and Democrats of being weak on law and order. Mr Biden followed two days later, and prayed with the now-paralysed Mr Blake. A tracking poll completed this week suggested Mr Biden had come out on top. It showed him now leading by 10 points in Wisconsin, up from just three points in the same poll before Mr Blake was shot on Aug 23. The candidates’ presence provoked passionate responses from Kenoshans on both sides. “Trump stood right where you're standing and I believe he felt it. He felt our pain," Scott Carpenter, 51, told The Telegraph, amid the charred remains of desks and filing cabinets in what used to be his shop, B & L Office Furniture. “Trump sees his country is bleeding and he wants to help. He's a real person. He's a businessman, I could see he knows what it's like to build your business from the ground up like our family did,” said Mr Carpenter. “Biden? I never heard from him. I’d like to. I don't know if he even reached out to any business owners while was here.”
from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://news.yahoo.com/biden-vs-trump-week-us-155104856.html
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