President Joe Biden is becoming a familiar face around the Great Lakes, and that’s no coincidence given his looming rematch with Donald Trump in November.
He began a two-day tour of Wisconsin and Michigan in Milwaukee on Wednesday, seeking to shore up the Democratic Party’s “blue wall” and build momentum for his re-election campaign after last week’s fiery State of the Union address. .
Aiming to show voters that his administration has improved lives, Biden used the stop to announce $3.3 billion in infrastructure projects in underserved communities, including 1960 It also included $36 million to reconnect a portion of Milwaukee’s 6th Avenue, which had been separated by freeway construction in the 1990s.
A sequel to the historic presidential election rematch since 1956, Biden vs. Trump, is underway
“We will rebuild our roads, fill cracks in our sidewalks, and create safe spaces to live, work, play, breathe clean air, and shop at local grocery stores stocked with fresh, healthy food.” “We’re creating food. We’re creating food,” he said.
“You’ve lived and felt the decisions that were made decades ago,” Biden said. “Today, today, we are making decisions that will change your lives for decades to come.”
The money comes from a bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law during his first year in office.
President Joe Biden visits his Wisconsin campaign office in Milwaukee on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
Biden told voters that his Republican predecessor and likely challenger in this year’s election, Donald Trump, promised infrastructure improvements but failed to deliver.
Biden said, “He didn’t accomplish anything.” “
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump secured their party’s nominations on Tuesday after scoring decisive victories in the primaries, setting the stage for what is expected to be a bitter rematch between the two men.
Much of the battle will be fought in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania, the first state Biden visited after the State of the Union address. They are collectively known as the “Blue Wall” because they have historically supported the Democratic Party.
Trump flipped all three to win the White House in 2016, but Biden regained them four years ago and will likely need to keep them to secure a second term. There will be.
Biden also plans to visit North Carolina and other battleground states in the coming weeks. He has overseen the opening of field offices as the campaign hires and trains organizers and begins recruiting volunteers.
It represents a show of political organization, with the president so far preoccupied with a competitive primary and four ongoing criminal cases in which he faces 91 felonies. This is an area in which he is ahead of Mr. Trump.
Biden’s re-election campaign hopes field organizations can neutralize the president’s low approval ratings and polls showing a majority of voters, even Democrats, do not want him re-elected. .
“This president is a really impressive retail politician. He doesn’t just give a rally and walk away,” said Jim Payne, mayor of Superior, Wisconsin, a port city on the Minnesota border. Biden has visited the site twice, including in January, to promote the bridge built as part of the infrastructure law.
“He really takes the time to talk to people and listen to their individual stories and talk to them one-on-one about their lives,” Payne said.
The $3.3 billion in grants announced Wednesday targets a total of 132 projects, including those in Atlanta. Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and Birmingham, Alabama. Syracuse, New York. and Toledo, Ohio. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said some projects are relatively small and can be completed in a “short period of time,” while others are “large, ambitious undertakings that will take years.”
Mr. Biden visited the opening of his campaign headquarters in Milwaukee, where nearly 40% of residents are black, rather than the state capital Madison, which is typically a Democratic campaign hub.
He said volunteers and staff in Milwaukee and elsewhere will help secure a victory over Trump.
“This is how we win again,” he said. “A lot of people helped me in 2020. We made sure he was a loser and a loser. We’re going to make sure it happens again, right?”
It will be Biden’s ninth visit to Wisconsin as president and his fifth visit to Milwaukee, where the Republican Party will hold its national convention this summer. Chris Lacivita, an adviser to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who won re-election in 2022, is also a top Trump campaign aide, another sign that the state is a top Republican priority. It has become.
The president will head to Saginaw, north of Detroit, on Thursday, where there is a high concentration of black voters and union voters. He was once a staunch Democrat, but tilted toward Trump in 2016 and only narrowly supported Biden four years ago.
Mr. Biden, his campaign and top White House advisers have recently made frequent trips to Michigan, including Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit that has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, amid criticism of the administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. is visiting.
His challenge was borne out in last month’s Democratic presidential primary in Michigan, where activists promoted a “non-commitment” movement that won about 13% of the vote.
Thursday’s trip will not bring Biden to Dearborn, but instead will help him connect with key constituencies in other parts of the state. The campaign has promised to open more than 15 field offices in Michigan, complementing the 44 field offices in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Early polls show Biden with a better lead over Trump in Wisconsin than in Michigan. Richard Tuba, a longtime Michigan pollster, said more “doubly disadvantaged” voters were likely to vote in November than “dedicated” campaign supporters in the Democratic primary. He said it was far more likely to make the vote decisive. He described these people as residents of the state who plan to vote in November but don’t like either Trump or Biden.
“If they can be persuaded to vote for Joe Biden, Joe Biden will win Michigan,” Tuba said. “But I think it’s an easier task for Donald Trump to make sure that these doubly disadvantaged people are divided.”
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Tuba said one way Biden could win over those voters could be by campaigning on issues such as abortion rights rather than Biden. He said the president’s criticism of the president’s proposal to allow Russia to “do whatever it wants” to some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies was aimed not only at immigrants from the Baltic states but also at Michigan’s large Polish-American population. He pointed out that it might resonate with other people as well.
The Biden campaign moved quickly to highlight those comments in a three-week, six-figure digital ad campaign targeting about 900,000 Baltic Americans in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Still, that may not be enough for some Michigan voters, whose disinterest in a rematch between Trump and Biden is clear. “I’ll probably skip the top spot on the ballot,” Saginaw resident Jeffrey Bulls said.
