President Joe Biden is kicking off a travel stretch intended to save the Democratic Party’s majorities in Congress with visits to two pivotal states that will provide an early test of his political clout ahead of November’s midterm elections.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden is kicking off a travel stretch intended to save the Democratic Party’s majorities in Congress with visits to two pivotal states that will provide an early test of his political clout ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Over the next week, Biden will make three visits to Pennsylvania and one to Wisconsin — both states with competitive Senate and gubernatorial races. It’s part of a series of upcoming trips White House aides say are designed to promote Biden’s achievements and contrast his record with Republicans.
The president will start his travels Tuesday with an official speech on his crime-prevention initiative in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, next door to his birthplace of Scranton. He plans to deliver a prime-time address Thursday in Philadelphia on what the White House calls “the continued battle for the soul of the nation.” Next week, he’ll attend events marking Labor Day in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.
The travel will measure Biden’s appeal — or lack thereof — among Democrats running for Congress: The party’s Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, is skipping the Wilkes-Barre event but will attend Monday’s Labor Day parade, his spokesman said.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for governor, will join Biden in Wilkes-Barre, his office said, as will Democratic Representative Matt Cartwright, according to the New York Times. Aides to Cartwright, who represents the area and faces a tough re-election race, didn’t return requests for comment.
Biden is riding high off a series of landmark domestic and foreign policy victories, positive economic data and falling gasoline prices, which have boosted his sagging poll numbers as well as Democrats’ prospects of holding onto their slim House and Senate majorities. His approval rating is about 42%, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of polls — still underwater, but an improvement of more than four percentage points since late July.
Many Democratic office-seekers in competitive states have kept their distance from the president. Fetterman, Shapiro and Cartwright have not tied themselves to Biden in their campaign messaging and advertising. Fetterman, the Senate hopeful, has explicitly run against Washington.
“They’re holding their own running their own campaigns, and I think keeping some distance from the president in a competitive race isn’t a bad idea for them,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll.
Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that could determine control of Congress. Former President Donald Trump will travel to Wilkes-Barre just four days after Biden to hold a rally. Biden has already made three visits to the state this year.
Democrats hope to flip the Senate seat in Pennsylvania being vacated by Republican Pat Toomey and hold on to the governor’s mansion.
Fetterman communications director Joe Calvello said in a statement that the candidate looked forward to speaking with Biden in Pittsburgh “about the need to finally decriminalize marijuana.”
Read more: Fetterman to Skip One Biden Pennsylvania Event and Join Another
Biden is less popular in Pennsylvania, a state he won in 2020 and considers his second home, than he is nationally. Only about a third of Keystone State voters said Biden is doing an excellent or good job as president, according to a new Franklin & Marshall poll.
Yet Fetterman and Shapiro are performing better in the state than Biden, holding double-digit leads in the Franklin & Marshall survey over their respective Republican opponents: celebrity doctor-turned-politician Mehmet Oz and state Senator Doug Mastriano, a leading proponent of Trump’s false claims that Biden’s 2020 victory in Pennsylvania was fraudulent.
Both of those Trump-endorsed candidates have proved to be weaker than party leaders hoped. Oz and Mastriano’s favorability ratings are underwater by 30 percentage points and 23 percentage points respectively in the Franklin & Marshall poll.
Trump remains polarizing with suburban voters living near large- and medium-sized metro areas, with whom Oz and Mastriano need to make inroads.
“It probably hurts more than helps right at this moment,” Yost said of Trump’s visit.
Biden’s goal, meanwhile, is to raise voters’ awareness of his achievements, which in turn could help boost his approval ratings, making him more of an asset for Democratic candidates. That’s a difficult task, given that Americans’ persistent fears about the economy and outrage over inflation have been the strongest factors in shaping perceptions of Biden.
White House aides say Biden’s schedule is expected to include a mix of political and official visits to battleground states and districts in the two months ahead of the midterms.
The events will promote recent legislative successes, including a $437 billion health, climate and tax law; new subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing; and bipartisan gun safety and infrastructure laws.
In Tuesday’s speech, Biden is expected to tout his “Safe America Plan,” which includes funding to hire thousands more police officers and is aimed at countering Republican accusations that Democrats are not serious about fighting violent crime.
Biden also plans to contrast his support for an assault-weapons ban with Republicans’ opposition, as well as with some GOP lawmakers’ calls to strip the FBI of funding following its search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“That extreme MAGA agenda that you heard him talk about last week is a threat to the rule of law,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“He will say that you can’t propose defunding the FBI, or defend the mob that stormed the Capitol and attacked and assaulted police officers on Jan. 6, and be pro-police,” she said.
In Thursday’s speech, the president will warn that the country’s core values — including democracy itself — are at stake, a White House official said, previewing the speech on condition of anonymity. He’ll stress that it’s his party fighting to preserve American rights and freedoms, the official said.
Biden plans to continue his travels next Friday in Ohio, where he will attend the groundbreaking of an Intel Corp. semiconductor manufacturing facility. Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan and gubernatorial aspirant Nan Whaley have avoided appearing with Biden during his past visits to the state.
(Updates with detail on Thursday speech in 24th paragraph. The spelling of Cartwright was corrected in a previous version of this story.)
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