President Joe Biden’s weeklong tour of swing states is aimed to prove he can still stump the old way for his last campaign in a long life of politics, a state-by-state argument to convince voters that he remains the best man for the job.
Across five electoral battlegrounds this week, Biden addressed his supporters from a high school gym, an industrial event space, an indoor tennis court, a Boys-and-Girls Club and a supporter’s front porch, hoping to put an exclamation point on his impassioned State of the Union address last week.
It was a far cry from the same period four years ago when Biden was forced to dramatically scale back his campaign as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, including long stretches cloistered at his Delaware home.
LuVerda Martin, a nurse and midwife from the Milwaukee suburbs, acknowledged that she’s had lingering questions about the wisdom of Biden running again. But she said she was “pleasantly surprised” by the president’s performance and rationale for four more years.
“I was actually quite motivated by what I saw,” Martin said in an interview on the eve of Biden’s stop in Wisconsin. “I felt relieved with the talking points and how he expressed himself, and his energy level was quite impressive.”
From the corridors of the West Wing to campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, advisers to the president were exuberant about the opening volley of the general election. Yet it’s an open question whether Biden’s performance will move public sentiment and his approval ratings, which have been alarmingly low for a president seeking reelection.
“I just don’t think he gets credit simply because he’s not as loud and boisterous about what he is doing,” Martin said. “We tend to focus on the negative. We tend to think about…
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