President Joe Biden is back on the campaign trail, but he is not in the state that has a Senate runoff election next week.
Biden’s campaign foray, a fundraiser for Senate Democrats in Boston, Massachusetts, more than 1,000 miles from Georgia and its Senate race, coincides with mounting speculation about whether he will announce his own 2024 presidential cycle plans.
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Biden’s trip to Boston Friday, a late addition to the public weeklong schedule the White House published last weekend, has prompted questions about why the president is not headed south to support Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in his Senate contest against retired NFL player Herschel Walker.
“I’m going to Georgia today to help Sen. War — not to Georgia. We’re going to help Sen. Warnock because I’m doing a major fundraiser up in Boston today for … our next and continued Senate candidate and senator,” Biden said in response to a question on Friday.
“We need that 51st vote,” Biden said once he arrived at the Democratic phone bank in Boston. “I know Rev. Warnock well.”
“One of the things I would argue … that we saw over the last several months is that it didn’t matter where the president went — his message very much resonated,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this week. “His message on his economic policy, how he was delivering for the American people. And we made that contrast very clearly with Congress and what Republicans in Congress were trying to do. And that worked, right? That worked.”
Biden should “stick with what’s working and stay away from Georgia” after he avoided the battleground before last month’s midterm elections, according to political analyst Bertram Johnson. That is despite Democrats outperforming expectations by keeping the Senate and Republicans to a small majority in the House.
“The main potential advantage of visits by presidents and other luminaries is to stoke turnout, but if such a visit riles up the other side, turnout could increase among Republicans as well,” the Middlebury College politics professor told the Washington Examiner. “Better to leave that job to others whose presence might not have that effect — and to the team working ‘get out the vote’ efforts on the ground.”
“Joe Biden’s failed economic agenda of higher taxes, soaring inflation, shrinking savings, and falling real wages has made him so unpopular he is going further away from Georgia,” said Nainoa Johsens, a Republican National Committee spokesman. “The Boston fundraiser is proof he’s a drag for Democrats and can only find support among a room of far-left donors.”
As Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron for a state visit at the White House, former President Barack Obama returned to Georgia to rally voters before polls close next Tuesday. Obama told the raucous crowd that Walker “can be anything he wants to be, except for a United States senator.”
“An extra senator gives Democrats more breathing room on important bills,” he said. “It prevents one person from holding up everything. And it also puts us in a better position a couple of years from now when you’ve got another election, but the Senate map is going to be tilted in the favor of Republicans. And it will help prevent Republicans from getting a filibuster-proof majority that could allow them to do things like passing a federal abortion ban.”
On the sidelines of the Macron state dinner, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) projected confidence in Warnock because “people are seeing who he is” and “they like who he is.” Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Atlanta mayor and current White House aide, expressed similar optimism, predicting “a great night in Georgia” based on “early turnout numbers.”
“I think the president will go wherever he’s wanted and needed,” she told reporters before early voting stopped Friday.
An Emerson College poll conducted this week found Warnock is 2 percentage points ahead of Warnock, 51% to 49%, but his edge is within the survey’s 3.2-point margin of error. The same poll found Biden’s approval is at 42%, a 1-point improvement compared to Emerson’s final preelection survey. Biden’s 52% disapproval is steady.
The split Congress will complicate Biden’s agenda on Capitol Hill. But former Democratic consultant Christopher Hahn is not concerned about the president’s net negative approval or the consequences it could have on his reelection prospects. Biden has repeated that his “intention” is to seek a second term, and his advocacy for South Carolina, which was instrumental in him securing the 2020 presidential nomination, to lead the 2024 Democratic primary calendar has only contributed to rumors regarding his future.
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“Having a GOP House will only increase his popularity,” the Aggressive Progressive podcast host said of Biden. “They will spend their time overreaching on unpopular policies and wild goose chase investigations. The public will see the House as obstructionist, and it will give the president an easy target to blame for the lack of progress.”
Biden traveled to Boston Friday afternoon to greet Prince William and his wife, Kate, of the United Kingdom at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum before taking part in an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers phone bank. The president then was set to address the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser. Warnock had almost $20 million more cash on hand than Walker as of last month, according to Open Secrets.
