A week before the midterm elections, President Joe Biden heads to Florida to prop up two trailing Democratic candidates while bypassing a number of swing states with more competitive races.
Biden’s trip to Florida puts him in direct competition with two of the most important Republican leaders in the country, either of whom could be his 2024 opponent if he seeks reelection: Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is up for reelection next Tuesday, and former President Donald Trump.
Both men are frequent foils for Biden’s attacks on “MAGA Republicans.” But since Sept. 1, Biden has visited only six of the 14 states judged by Cook Political Report to have the most competitive Senate and gubernatorial races, so it is noteworthy that he is headed to Florida as both contests there appear to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach.
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Biden hasn’t been to Georgia, Arizona, or Nevada despite narrowly winning all three in 2020. These represent the Republicans’ best Senate pickup opportunities. The chamber is split 50-50, under Democratic control due solely to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote, and Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take it back.
Instead, Biden has been spending his time in New York, where the governor’s race has suddenly become competitive and Democrats find themselves on the defensive in congressional districts he won in 2020, and Maryland.
The one highly competitive race in which Biden has been a fixture is Pennsylvania. Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Biden-backed Senate candidate, is recovering from a stroke and in need of campaign surrogates. The president also likes to tout his Scranton ties despite not having especially high approval ratings in the state.
Biden has been to Oregon, where there is a close race for governor, and has appeared with Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), who is believed to be in trouble. His approach has been to give public speeches advertising benefits from spending bills he has signed into law, amid criticism that these policies have contributed to rampant inflation, while appearing with candidates at Democratic National Committee events.
This campaign strategy has allowed Biden to raise money for Democrats and deliver thematic speeches predicting Republicans will cut Social Security or threaten abortion rights without jeopardizing especially vulnerable Democrats.
“When the president speaks, he has a large bully pulpit,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a recent briefing. “And he has been able, in the past several weeks, to set that national conversation.”
Biden’s beef with DeSantis and, to a lesser extent, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) make up much of his closing argument against Republicans in the midterm elections. Damaging DeSantis, even if that just means a smaller victory margin, would be a win for the White House. Biden has also cited Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) as one of his main pieces of evidence that new GOP majorities would cut entitlement programs for senior citizens. Scott isn’t up for reelection Tuesday, but he is chairing the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm.
The president has also consistently sought to tie Republicans to the fourth Florida man, his predecessor, Trump. All this is part of a broader effort to change the race from a referendum on Biden’s presidency to a choice involving other controversial figures and policies.
“This is not a referendum. It’s a choice, a fundamental choice, a choice between two very different visions for the country,” Biden now says in his stump speeches.
Former President Barack Obama and Trump held more campaign rallies and fundraisers than Biden in the homestretch of their first midterm elections. But Democrats lost 63 House seats under Obama in 2010 and Republicans lost 40 on Trump’s watch in 2018.
“I don’t think rallies have proved effective for candidates in the midterms,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain told CNN. “I don’t think it should surprise anyone that we’re not using the strategy that failed in 2010 and the strategy that failed in 2018.”
Yet Rubio now leads Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) by 8 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average and is above 50% of the vote. There are at least half a dozen Senate seats at or close to the margin of error.
DeSantis leads Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL), a former GOP governor, by 12.3 points in the RealClearPolitics average. A recent Democratic poll has the incumbent winning 54% of the vote, the University of North Florida shows him winning 55%. At a time when there are multiple races in play nationwide, Biden is campaigning against a governor who looks like he might win in a landslide, at least by battleground state standards.
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Biden’s Florida swing creates the impression that he is traveling to states that are important enough to warrant national attention but not where he could do any damage in the races Democrats most need to win.
The trip comes as a new Wall Street Journal poll showed Biden with a 55% disapproval rating nationally and Republicans seizing the lead in the generic congressional ballot.
