Riding the momentum of a strong State of the Union address and the elevation of a political battle he and his top advisers relish, he needed assurance on one detail for his scheduled remarks in Florida a few hours later.
“We have copies of the Scott plan at this event, right?” Biden asked.
Yes, he was told.
By the time Biden arrived inside the University of Tampa ballroom where he was scheduled to speak, the White House-produced pamphlets had been placed on each chair in the audience.
It was a minor detail, particularly for a president, to focus on. Given those seats would be filled by partisans and Biden supporters, the pamphlets themselves would seem inconsequential in a broader political sense.
The event itself would take place in a state few Democrats see as a true battleground in 2024 and would put Biden on the ground for less than four hours.
But the placement of the pamphlets and Biden’s message during his speech opened a window into the president’s intense focus on the political salience of elevating one senator’s proposal that long pre-dated Tuesday’s primetime address.
Biden’s off-script back and forth with Republicans over Medicare and Social Security may have become a signature primetime moment, but it had roots in months of pressing advisers — and other Democrats — to make the issue central in the midterm elections and beyond.
He would first bring it up in public for the first time fewer than three weeks after Scott released his “12 Point Plan to Rescue America.”
Biden was clear that it wasn’t just a focus on Social Security and Medicare, two programs subject to a long-running fierce political and ideological debate between Republicans and Democrats.
“He zeroed in immediately on the idea that their own words were what would hang them here,” a person familiar with the…
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