Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) will not appear with President Joe Biden when he visits her hometown of Madison on Friday, among his first campaign stops since a debate performance last week that shook Democrats’ confidence in him as their presidential nominee.
Baldwin, running for a third term in the Senate battleground of Wisconsin, has not appeared alongside Biden since a January trip touting the White House’s infrastructure law. In that time, he has made three subsequent visits to the state.
But Thursday’s debate, in which Biden appeared sluggish and at times lost his train of thought, has placed greater attention on whether vulnerable Democrats distance themselves from the president amid a wave of calls for him to step aside and make way for a different nominee.
Baldwin will not join Biden during his latest trip, a campaign spokesman confirmed to the Washington Examiner. Instead, she will travel to two Fourth of July parades on Friday, part of a “Fired Up for Tammy” tour that will take her about five hours north of Madison.
Her campaign says the events have been in the works for weeks. However, Republicans have framed her absence as proof that Baldwin considers Biden toxic to her race.
Democrats running in tough Senate races were slow to express their support for the president in the hours after he set off a partywide panic. The Baldwin campaign, for its part, initially sidestepped questions about whether the senator still has confidence in Biden before confirming that “Tammy supports the president.”
Brian Schimming, the chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, mocked Baldwin’s campaign stops as an “I Don’t Want to Get Fired with Joe” tour.
Tying Baldwin to the president, who suffered from low approval ratings long before his debate, is central to Republicans’ election strategy. She leads the presumptive GOP nominee, businessman Eric Hovde, by an average of 8 points four months out from Election Day. Meanwhile, Biden is behind or tied against Trump in the latest Wisconsin polling.
Democratic leaders are expecting their candidates will enjoy a degree of separation from the president. Polls across the Senate map show incumbents outperforming Biden in swing states.
“Tammy Baldwin is running her own race for the people of Wisconsin,” a campaign spokesman said in a statement earlier this week. “Her focus will always be on showing up across the state, listening to working Wisconsinites, and fighting to make their lives better.”
Yet the panic over Biden’s viability as a presidential nominee has Democratic operatives freshly fearing a Republican sweep of Congress in November. To maintain control of the Senate, Democrats can only afford to lose a single seat.
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The Biden campaign has sought to allay those fears by posting strong fundraising numbers in the days after the debate. His campaign stop to Madison, followed by a trip to Philadelphia on Sunday, will provide him another opportunity to calm nerves.
Trump used a trip to Wisconsin last month to smooth over reports he called Milwaukee a “horrible city” in a private meeting with congressional Republicans in Washington, D.C. The former president has denied the allegation.
