Biden Florida visit to kick off final midterm campaign push

WASHINGTON - US President Joe Biden is kicking off the final campaign stretch before

Nov 8 elections

that will determine whether his party retains control of Congress with a visit to Florida, a state where it’s become increasingly difficult for Democrats to win.

Mr Biden’s Tuesday visit to the Sunshine State - in which he’ll appear alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and Senate hopeful Val Demings - begins a push that also will include visits to Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Maryland. 

Mr Biden has sought to re-frame the election as a choice between Republican and Democratic economic policies for the middle class, rather than a report card on his first two years in office.

“I’m going to be spending the rest of the time making the case that this is not a referendum,” Mr Biden said over the weekend in Delaware, where he voted. “It’s a choice.”

He’ll revive a now-familiar refrain on Tuesday, targeting Republicans over what he’s derided as plans to gut Social Security and Medicare after some GOP lawmakers floated changes to those programmes, including in upcoming talks over raising the federal debt ceiling. 

Republicans, meanwhile, have hammered Mr Biden on inflation, crime and the surge in border crossings to try to motivate their voters. 

Democrats face an uphill climb in swing-state Florida, which has trended toward Republicans in recent election cycles.

Polls show both Mr Crist and Mr Demings trailing their incumbent Republican opponents - Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio - in a state where Mr Donald Trump beat Mr Biden by three percentage points.

Mr DeSantis, a sharp critic of Mr Biden and Democratic policies, is seen as a potential 2024 Republican presidential contender. 

The governor drew Mr Biden’s criticism in September for allegedly using taxpayer dollars to fly dozens of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

The two met last month, when they toured Florida communities damaged by Hurricane Ian.

Mr Biden and Mr DeSantis were careful to skirt politics, but their interaction was cordial at best.

During the gubernatorial debate, Mr Crist accused Mr DeSantis of being distracted by a potential White House bid. The governor declined to say if he plans to run for president.

Mr Biden has kept a light campaign schedule ahead of the election, with many Democratic candidates seeking to keep him and his sagging approval ratings at arm’s length.

Mr Biden’s Gallup approval rating from last week is 40 per cent, with 56 per cent disapproving.

Election forecasts say that Republicans are likely to win the House, while the Senate sits on a knife’s edge - it is divided 50-50 as of now and poised to remain very close. 

High-profile surrogates are helping energise Democratic voters to show up and vote, said Ms Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, citing events by Mr Biden, the First Lady Jill Biden, former president Barack Obama and others.

“All of that’s really helping to energise Democrats,” she said. Mr Biden is “good on the stump, and he’s more populist on the stump - he energised Democrats in 2020.”

Ms Lake expects Democrats will hold the Senate, but that the House will be close.

“It’s a lot of tough, tight races, but I think the numbers have been improving a little bit and part of that is Democrats are getting more energised,” she said.

Mr Biden will appear on Saturday with Mr Obama - who has campaigned recently in states the president has avoided - in Pennsylvania, where polls still give Democrat John Fetterman a slight edge despite a rocky debate performance.

The Senate race is a pickup opportunity for Democrats with Republican Pat Toomey retiring.

Mr Trump will hold his own rally there on Saturday. 

Mr Biden also said he’ll participate in an event in Maryland, where Democrats are poised to flip the governorship, and he travels later this week to New Mexico, which hosts another key gubernatorial race. 

It’s not clear whether Mr Biden will set foot in other key battlegrounds like Georgia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio before Election Day.

Midterm elections typically don’t favour a president’s party; Mr Trump, Mr Obama and Mr Bill Clinton all lost the House two years into their presidencies.

Mr George W. Bush saw Republicans pick up seats in the House and Senate a little more than a year after the 9/11 attacks.

Winning the Senate race in Pennsylvania would give Democrats breathing room at minimum to lose a seat elsewhere without losing control of the chamber.

At best, it could help increase their margin, which Mr Biden has said is key to passing Democratic priorities, such as codifying nationwide abortion rights into law. 

The 2024 presidential race - and ongoing Republican efforts to sow doubt about the 2020 results - also loom large, with this year’s races in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin poised to select governors who will wield considerable sway in the handling of the next presidential contest. BLOOMBERG