Obama and other popular Dems join midterm campaign trail
Testing on staging11
(NewsNation) — With just three weeks until Election Day and President Joe Biden lagging in approval ratings, Democrats are bringing in the reinforcements, tapping former President Barack Obama, first lady Jill Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttiegeg to help increase turnout in November.
Obama has been picking up the slack in key battleground states — campaigning in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, in hopes of helping candidates including Democratic Senate incumbent Raphael Warnock win their races.
Likewise, Jill Biden has been traversing the country working to increase turnout in November — a strategy that capitalizes on her strength as the president’s most popular surrogate.
“They can sort of shed the sheen of politics the president can’t,” said Michael LaRossa, who is the former press secretary for the first lady in the Biden administration.
That’s also the case with Buttigieg, who CNN reports has become the most requested name on the campaign trail for Democratic candidates in the midterms, even surpassing Vice President Kamala Harris.
“It’s the association with being a Democrat, but not with Biden or Harris,” a source told CNN on Sunday. “In the context of what people have to pick from, he’s very popular.”
It’s a game plan many see necessary as some candidates in states Biden lost prefer the president to stay off the trail completely.
In an Oct. 4 interview with Fox News, Rep. Tim Ryan, who is running for the Ohio Democratic Senate, answered, “no I’m not and I’m really not inviting anybody,” when asked if he was inviting the president to join his campaign trail anytime soon.
“He would actually cause more harm than good,” Lisa Camooso, a GOP strategist, told NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Dems seem to be playing keep-away with the commander in chief, sending him to parts of the country he is most popular, tapping into campaign cash in California and stumping for candidates in Oregon.
But he’ll soon be in battleground Wisconsin and is set to head to Pennsylvania in an event with vulnerable Senate candidate John Fetterman in liberal Philadelphia.
Obama and the other surrogates are focused on turnout at this point in the race, saying that what Democrats have shown In the past is that they can deliver.