When Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden campaign together in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for the first time this election on Friday, a national uproar over a series of racially charged shootings will cast a somber mood on their rally.
The joint appearance in Biden’s hometown comes hours after the deadly shootings in Dallas that killed five police officers and after a week rocked by two deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement. The events have once again thrust the issue of police violence directed at non-whites into the political spotlight in the middle of the 2016 presidential election.
Clinton plans to respond to the shootings in her remarks this afternoon here, and again when she visits the African Methodist Episcopal Convention in Philadelphia later in the day, according to an aide.
“She will renew her calls to ensure justice is served and will reemphasize the urgent need to reform our broken criminal justice system,” the aide said, in comments made before the Dallas shooting, adding that the Democratic presumptive nominee plans to also discuss her work on social justice and racial equality issues.
On Tuesday, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot dead by a police officer outside of a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A cell phone video shows an officer pinning Sterling to the ground, and after some yelling, multiple gunshots go off.
Then on Thursday, the aftermath of another fatal shooting was captured on camera in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Using her cell phone, Diamond Reynolds showed the world her bloodied boyfriend, Philando Castile, sitting limp next to her in the car. “You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir,” Reynolds says to the police officer in the video.
On Friday, five police officers were killed, gunned down at a Dallas demonstration, the single deadliest attack on law enforcement since September 11, 2001. Eleven officers total were shot, three suspects were in custody and a fourth suspect died.
The fatalities have unleashed a national public outcry. President Barack Obama delivered two statements from Warsaw, Poland. The first one came early Friday right after he landed, saying the shooting incidents earlier this week were “symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.” The second came hours later following the events in Dallas, when Obama vowed a harsh punishment for perpetrators and called the incident “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement.”
Clinton and Biden hit the road for the first time
Biden is the latest in a string of high-profile Democratic surrogates to hit the trail with Clinton. Obama held his first joint event with his 2008 rival in North Carolina on Tuesday, and last week, it was popular Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren who brought her star power to the national stage at a rally in Ohio.
Biden and Clinton plan to fundraiser together in Scranton after the public rally.
The vice president’s appearance with Clinton comes almost nine months after he had closed the door on a 2016 run of his own.
The decision, announced last October from the White House Rose Garden, came after months of painful deliberations. Just months before, Biden’s son, Beau, had died — a tragedy that the vice president acknowledged was an important factor in ultimately abandoning his dreams of a third White House run.
Long-time friend Ted Kaufman, who briefly succeeded Biden in the Senate, told CNN that the vice president has not “ever looked back.”
“Once he made the decision, I think that was the decision,” he said. “I think we’ve reached a point in the campaign where he’s been asked to help and he’s helping.”