President Joe Biden is returning to Democratic basics, underscoring his record on healthcare as former President Donald Trump criticizes Biden over his border policies.
Biden is scheduled to deliver an address on healthcare in the White House Indian Treaty Room on Wednesday. Biden’s speech comes one day after Trump traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan to denounce the “border bloodbath” under Biden’s administration.
The political split screen emphasizes how Biden is trying to play to his strengths so his campaign is better positioned to respond to the criticism before an expected surge in immigrants this spring.
A political conversation about immigration does not help Democrats, but a conversation about healthcare “works much better” before November, particularly now that the Affordable Care Act is popular, according to Claremont McKenna College politics professor and former Republican aide John Pitney.
“As Don Draper said on Mad Men: ‘If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation,’” Pitney told the Washington Examiner.
The incentive for Biden to “change the conversation” is evident, with the president’s average overall approval rating being net negative 16 percentage points, while his average approval for immigration is net negative 32.5 points, according to RealClearPolitics. Simultaneously, respondents told Quinnipiac University pollsters last week that their top three concerns were immigration (26%), the economy (20%), and preserving democracy (18%), raising questions about Biden’s strategy.
Meanwhile, healthcare was seventh with 4%. Abortion was tied eighth with 3%, although exit polls from elections since 2022 suggest the issue continues to increase Democratic voter turnout.
“While the Democrats hammer the GOP on Roe v. Wade and the right to choose, the Republicans counterpunch with immigration and the borders,” Quinnipiac University Poll polling analyst Tim Malloy told the Washington Examiner. “There are dozens of issues to do battle over, but those two domestic flashpoints eclipse all others.”
Separately, Trump has provided Biden and Democrats with another opportunity to discuss healthcare by starting to ask voters whether they are “better off” now than they were four years ago, hoping to take advantage of polling that indicates an average of 64.5% of respondents contend the country is on the wrong track, compared to 25% who argue it is headed in the wrong direction.
“I hope everyone in this country takes a moment to think back to where you were in March of 2020,” Biden told donors last week during his $26 million fundraiser in New York City with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “COVID led — came to America. Trump was president. He tried to downplay the whole virus. He told us that it will go away. ‘Just stay calm. It will be gone by Easter.’ … Four years later, look at how far we’ve come.”
Democrats also stand to gain from a conversation about Trump’s handling of COVID-19, according to Pitney.
“Every single day, they can point to something that went wrong exactly four years earlier,” Pitney said. “The one aspect of the issue that the Trump administration handled well was Operation Warp Speed. But Trump can’t talk much about that because much of his base hates vaccines.”
Biden’s remarks on Wednesday come after last week’s trip to North Carolina, a battleground state, where Biden appeared alongside Vice President Kamala Harris to promote their efforts to lower healthcare costs.
“There’s a lot of people lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, literally wondering, ‘What will happen if my spouse gets cancer or my child gets seriously ill? Will I have enough insurance? Can we afford the medical bills? Will we have to sell the house? What are we going to have to do?’” Biden told a crowd in Raleigh. “Because of all of you in this room and across the country, we changed that and made the Affordable Care Act the law of the land.”
“But Donald Trump and his MAGA friends are, if nothing than — but persistent,” he said. “They’ve tried to repeal it 50 times. Not a joke. Fifty times they’ve tried to repeal it, but we stopped them every time. … I got news for them. We’re going to stop them again.”
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Trump held his first general election-focused rally on Tuesday, acknowledging the death of Ruby Garcia, a 25-year-old who was allegedly shot dead by her boyfriend, an illegal Mexican immigrant who was previously deported in 2020, last month.
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“I stand before you today to declare that Joe Biden’s border bloodbath, that’s what it is, a bloodbath… and it’s destroying our country. It’s a very bad thing happening. It’s going to end on the day that I take office,” Trump told the event in Grand Rapids. “On day one, I will seal the border, and we’ll begin the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country. And if other countries say they won’t take them back, ‘We’re not going to take them back,’ I will say that, ‘Yeah, here they come. Hold on, hold on to your britches!’”
Trump leads Biden by an average of 2.5 points in national polls eight months before the election.
