by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch
Six months out from Election Day, some vulnerable Democrats are looking at President Biden’s poll numbers with concern.
Some Senate Democrats are distancing themselves from Biden’s ailing brand after polls show him trailing former President Trump in several battleground states, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports. It’s injecting fresh alarm as they scramble to keep their majority in the upper chamber. Democrats in tough races are breaking with Biden over border security, liquified natural gas exports, campus protests and the war in Israel, and tariffs on Chinese goods.
The candidates remain competitive in polls despite Biden’s low approval ratings and lagging position relative to Trump, but they worry the president’s political brand will weigh on their campaigns as Election Day nears.
If you go out there and do a focus group, the focus groups all say, ‘He’s 200 years old. You got to be kidding me,’” said one Democratic senator. “And the worst part about it is for unaffiliated voters or people that haven’t made up their mind, they look at this and say: ‘You have to be kidding us. These are our choices?’ And they indict us for not taking it seriously.”
One stress test facing the group this week: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will bring the bipartisan border deal that was negotiated early this year back up on the floor for a standalone vote. The original bill found support among Democratic senators vying for reelection in tough districts, but was blocked in February in the Senate amid attacks by top House Republicans and Trump, who is making the border a central campaign issue in his race for the White House.
SUPERPAC WOES: Biden’s allies are also concerned that Future Forward, the superPAC backing the president’s reelection bid, isn’t doing enough to help secure a victory in November. The Hill’s Amie Parnes writes that allies say the superPAC is sitting on a massive campaign war-chest but since their historic $250 million ad-buy in January has done little to make the case for Biden, amid a rash of polling that shows Trump leading in key battleground states.
The concerns about the president’s polling performance come as he gears up for a week of campaign travel to New England and a state visit from Kenyan President William Ruto, capped off by a Thursday state dinner at the White House.
On Saturday, Biden will deliver his second commencement address at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. Biden delivered a high-stakes commencement address Sunday at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, telling graduates of the historically Black men’s college that he is determined to “root out systemic racism” while fighting the “extremist forces aligned against the meaning and message” of the school.
But the speech exposed the president’s election-year political problems: the uproar over his unpopular foreign policy on Israel among Democrats coupled with his struggles to retain young and Black voters, who will be key to his reelection, write The Hill’s Julia Mueller and Brett Samuels.
Biden used the speech to say that manhood was not about “tough talk” and “bigotry” but about calling out hate.
“Their idea of being a man is toxic,” Biden told the graduates, a reference to unnamed political rivals — chiefly Trump. “That is not you. That is not us. Being a man is about strength and respect and dignity…. Insurrectionists who storm the Capitol with Confederate flags are called “patriots” by some. Not in my house.”
