President Biden Reschedules Valley Forge Area Campaign Speech

VALLEY FORGE, PA — President Joe Biden has rescheduled his Valley Forge area campaign speech from Saturday to Friday due to the anticipated winter storm heading to the greater Philadelphia region.

The speech, Biden's first of the New Year and seen by analysts as a pivotal moment in his reelection campaign, will now be held on Jan. 5, the day before the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in Washington, D.C.

It's not yet clear exactly where near Valley Forge Biden will speak. The Associated Press indicated that Biden will spend some of his day at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, some 15 miles away. But the Biden campaign has thus far declined to clarify the exact time or location.

Philadelphia area iconography has served as stage for keystone speeches from Biden himself over the past several years, as well as Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Obama in 2008, 2012, and 2020. Symbols of the Revolutionary War and America's founding are fertile ground for the metaphors invoked by leading in Democrats in recent years, as they seek to paint themselves as defenders of the nation's founding values which are under existential assault by former President Trump.

"Look, when we're talking about the president going near Valley Forge to deliver remarks, that's not an accident," Biden's Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks told MSNBC this week. "It's because it's the place where George Washington brought a lot of colonial militias together to fight for democracy. And that's exactly what we need to do to voters, we have to bring these constituencies together to fight for our democracy, and the threat that Republicans led by Donald Trump and his agenda pose to it."

After Valley Forge, Biden will speak at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina, the community rocked by a mass shooter who killed 12 Black attendees during a Bible study in 2015. His campaign has repeatedly described both Valley Forge and South Carolina, locations of some of the bleakest moments in American history, as "core constituencies."

Biden currently trails Trump, by 2.2 points nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics aggregate of recent polls, and 1 point in Pennsylvania.