From Gettysburg, Biden Calls for Healing of a ‘House Divided’

Seizing on the latest chaos fueled by Mr. Trump — this time the president’s cavalier attitude toward the coronavirus despite being sickened by it himself — Mr. Biden, whose campaign said he had again tested negative for the virus on Tuesday, built on his longstanding arguments about the need for calm and for the possibility of finding common ground.

“As I look across America today, I’m concerned,” Mr. Biden said. “The country is in a dangerous place. Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope seems elusive.”

Too many Americans, he said, are engaged in “total, unrelenting, partisan warfare.”

“Instead of treating each other’s party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy,” he said. “This must end. We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country, the spirit of being able to work with one another.”

If Mr. Biden was aiming to win over Republican voters in this swing state, he had limited reason for hope. In Pennsylvania, just 15 percent of likely G.O.P. voters expressed a positive view of Mr. Biden, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week. But among independent voters in the Keystone State, he is viewed more favorably: 54 percent see him positively, while 44 percent see him negatively.

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Oct. 6, 2020, 7:18 p.m. ET

Nationwide, there were some signs of Mr. Biden building more support in the wake of last week’s debate — but not much of that has come from Republicans or conservatives. A CNN poll conducted after the debate was the first all year to show a majority of Americans expressing a positive view of Mr. Biden. That was in large part because of a nine-point uptick over the past month in the share of women rating him positively. Among Republicans, his favorability rating was basically unchanged: Just 12 percent expressed a favorable opinion.

Earlier on Tuesday, at the end of a virtual fund-raising event, Mr. Biden said he had “worked and worked and worked on” the speech and indicated it would be about “the soul of America and racial equality and what significant trouble we’re in right now.”

“Some people may think it’s a little dramatic, but I think it’s appropriate,” he said. “We have to unite this nation and I’ve decided to do it from Gettysburg. I’ve worked on this speech very, very, very hard.”