Biden heads to Wisconsin neck and neck with Trump
Christian Datoc
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President Joe Biden will travel to Milwaukee on Tuesday as he remains neck and neck with former President Donald Trump in the critical swing state of Wisconsin.
The president’s trip, his first to the state since announcing his reelection campaign in April, will highlight his economic agenda, and he’ll make the case for “how Bidenomics is investing in America to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down,” White House officials say.
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Biden won Wisconsin over Trump by less than a point in the 2020 general election, and Trump bested former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a similar margin in 2016. Clinton’s general election loss has been directly associated with her decision to totally forgo the state on the 2016 campaign trail.
The Tuesday trip comes as Biden’s reelection campaign is ramping up its messaging to voters in Wisconsin, one of four “toss-up” states that determined the outcome of the 2020 election and will likely play a key part in deciding 2024’s presidential winner.
Vice President Kamala Harris also traveled to Wisconsin earlier this month, delivering remarks in Kenosha and attending multiple campaign events while the president vacationed in Delaware.
The RealClearPolitics polling average shows that Trump, Biden’s likely opponent in the general election, has gained ground on the president in the state in recent months.
A July poll from Marquette University showed Trump and Biden tied at 50% support. That sampling, which polled nearly 800 Wisconsin voters, gives Trump a 1-point advantage over Biden when factoring out voters who have not 100% decided on a candidate.
Biden fares even worse in the Marquette poll in a head-to-head matchup with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), the second-leading Republican primary candidate, and currently trails him by 3 points.
The president’s Tuesday trip to Milwaukee also comes one day ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, a critical component of Biden’s legislative agenda and a central pillar of his reelection argument.
Still, a monthslong “Bidenomics” messaging blitz has failed to move the needle regarding Biden’s economic polling, and currently, just 38% of respondents say they approve of the president’s economic stewardship, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, briefing reporters ahead of the Inflation Reduction Act Anniversary, claimed that the law, along with the CHIPS and Science Act and bipartisan infrastructure bill, are “historic” but still “conceptual” to most voters.
“This is changing people’s lives,” he claimed. “And that’s why we need to be on the ground and be comfortable being repetitive about how this is making people’s lives better.”
Biden campaign officials recently told the Washington Examiner the campaign plans to increase its “relational organizing,” a pandemic-era strategy used by the White House during the COVID-19 vaccination push to boost Biden’s economic polling.
The strategy aims to recruit local leaders, online influencers, labor groups, and other “trusted messengers” to help argue on the president’s behalf, especially in communities that don’t regularly consume national news or are averse to Biden politically.
“We absolutely know we need to do more to sell the president’s economic agenda and draw that direct through line to his investments and the economic improvement and just the progress on things that Americans have wanted action on for a long time, like prescription drug cars like infrastructure,” a campaign official said in an interview.
“More than ever, and especially post COVID, Americans are looking for information and making decisions based on what their friends and family and people they know say,” the official continued. “They’re looking inwards, basically, and so really invoking and deploying trusted messengers early on is really important for us.”
The White House and Biden’s campaign will also seek to directly tie the Republican agenda to a potential reversal of the economic growth, and green energy investments, the country has seen following the coronavirus pandemic.
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“If you think about the Inflation Reduction Act,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, “we’re about to celebrate the one-year anniversary of that, which has given the most investment in dealing with climate change of any other piece of legislation.”
“You know what Republicans in Congress are trying to do. They’re trying to take that away,” she continued. “They’re trying to repeal [Inflation Reduction Act], and that is a problem, and so while we’re trying to deal with this existential threat, this climate change crisis, the president is doing everything that he can to make sure that we’re dealing with this with in a way that actually leads to results, and that’s what the president’s going to continue to do.”