VP Joe Biden makes campaign stop in St. Augustine

By Ryan Buffa| gargoyle@flagler.edu
Video by Joshua Santos

With just two days until the final presidential debate, Vice President Joe Biden held a campaign event in the Ketterlinus Gymnasium in St. Augustine on Oct. 20.

According to Sgt. Mike Etheridge of the St. Augustine Police Department, 955 people attended the event.

“American is not in decline. America is coming back. And it’s never going back,” Biden said.

He discussed the differences between the Obama-Biden and Romney-Ryan platforms such as the, economy, tax cuts, Medicare, education and the war in Afghanistan.

Biden and the crowd laughed as he described Governor Mitt Romney as, “Not just sketchy. He’s etch-a-sketchy.”

Obama Organizing for America Field Organizer Caleb Campbell encouraged supporters to volunteer to help get Floridians to go out and vote. “Volunteering is the most powerful tool we utilize today,” Campbell said.

“I’m so passionate about President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s vision for this country, I quit my job in Washington D.C. to move down here to Florida to work on this campaign and do what I can do to help get these guys get another four more years,” Campbell said.

Executive Director of the Council on Aging for St. Johns County, Cathy Brown, energized the crowd as she introduced Biden to the stage.  “They are protecting our Medicare and our social security,” she said. “They fought for us. Now it’s time for us to fight for them.”

Cheers and “Forward 2012” signs waved in the air as the vice president took the stage.

Biden began by telling Floridians to participate in the Vote Now campaign, as well as supporting other Democrats running for congress. He then dove into comparing the differences between the Obama administration and the Romney campaign.

“I think these debates have shown thus far that we have a fundamentally different view on how to move this country forward and a fundamentally different values set on how we get it done. And the differences are profound,” Biden said.

He said that he and Obama have made a plan to pull out all troops in Afghanistan by 2014. He compared this promise with the response of the Romney campaign: “They say maybe we can pull out by 2014, it all depends,” Biden said. “America can only depend on a president who says what he means and means what he says.”

He also touched on women’s healthcare saying, “(Romney and Ryan) believe that women do not have the right to control their body.”

“I don’t recognize the country they are talking about,” he said, noting there has been 31 straight months of private-sector job growth and unemployment was brought down by 2 percent.

“America is not in decline. America is coming back. And it’s never going back,” Biden said to cheers. “It’s never been a good bet, to bet against the American people.”