President Joe Biden made headlines during his first press conference of the year by promising to leave the White House more to “go out and talk to the public” about their top issues.
Dating back to the 2020 campaign, the coronavirus prevented the president from visiting different parts of the country and introducing his legislative principles to people outside the Beltway Bubble. Still, following his January travel pledge, “Amtrak Joe’s” jaunts away from Washington have still been restricted to the Acela Corridor, even as both red and blue states are loosening pandemic mitigation protocols.
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Since his press conference in January, Biden spent one day ostensibly campaigning in both Pennsylvania and New York and spent the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend at his family home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Previously, Biden traveled away from the White House 83 times. He only visited non-East Coast states 24 times, and two of those trips were to Europe for NATO, G-7, and G-20 summits. Furthermore, he’s visited his Wilmington and Rehoboth, Delaware, homes 29 times as president.
Biden will take his fourth trip following his travel pledge to Culpepper, Virginia, on Thursday where White House officials say he will discuss the administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices.
Culpepper is the home district of Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, whose seat Republicans are heavily targeting in the 2022 midterm elections.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki subtly suggested that the White House’s “North Star” in planning Biden’s trips across the country would at least partially be campaigning for vulnerable Democrats “facing tough reelection battles.”
“I’ve become quite careful about what I say about politics and campaigning from this podium, but the president himself has said — so I can point to that — that he is eager to go out there and hit the road for Democrats who are fighting for an agenda for the American people,” she explained. “So, certainly tomorrow, when he is out in the Richmond area with Congresswoman Spanberger, this is an opportunity for him — to go back to your first question — to really talk about his view that the fact that Americans are forced to pay two to three times more for drugs than citizens in other advanced economies is unacceptable, it’s flat out wrong, and we need to act to stop the abuse of American families.”
Still, Republican operatives claim that Biden’s dismal poll numbers are leading high-profile Democratic campaigns to turn down opportunities to appear alongside the president. That list includes the gubernatorial campaigns of Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Florida Democratic Rep. Val Demings’s Senate bid.
“Abigail Spanberger already rubber-stamped Biden’s failed agenda, so it’s no surprise she’d join him to push for more of their disastrous policies,” Congressional Leadership Fund press secretary Cally Perkins said in a statement. “Spanberger showing up with Joe Biden will only remind voters who’s responsible for the rising crime and skyrocketing prices they created.”
Democratic operatives, however, mocked the idea that any candidates are giving Biden the cold shoulder.
“Look, 2022 will likely get nasty. It’s a critical election, and all of our incumbent candidates are focusing on winning reelection so they can help President Biden continue to pass legislation that will not only help America’s working families recover from the pandemic but come back stronger than ever,” one senior DNC official told the Washington Examiner. “The idea that any of them are turning down invitations from the White House to visit their home districts is simply nonsense.”
Biden has yet to visit Arizona and West Virginia, the respective home states of centrist Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, despite growing Democratic dissatisfaction with the two party members blocking the president’s agenda items in the Senate.
Though Manchin is likely the only Democrat who can get elected in his increasingly red state, liberals, including some sitting lawmakers, have been openly supportive of primary challengers to Sinema in 2024. Still, some political operatives think Arizona may also be simply too conservative to elect a more liberal Democrat.
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“Voters in Arizona and West Virginia don’t want the IRS spying on their bank accounts. They don’t want an almost 2,000% tax hike on smokeless tobacco. They don’t want their vapes taxed higher. They don’t want higher taxes on their retirements,” Republican strategist Brian Johnson previously told the Washington Examiner. “The reality is the Acela-corridor elitist progressive President Biden is not the moderate candidate Biden who promised to work across the aisle that folks in these states voted for.”
