The Biden administration will turn to a familiar playbook when the president visits Colorado on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden will visit the Centennial State to tour wind tower manufacturer CS Wind and speak about “Bidenomics,” but he’ll also be speaking on another topic.
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CS Wind is located in Rep. Lauren Boebert‘s (R-CO) district, a fact the White House noted in its preview of the event.
“The president will highlight how self-described MAGA Republicans like Representative Lauren Boebert are threatening those investments, jobs, and opportunities,” the event description reads.
This aspect of the trip, highlighting the threat of Republicans and invoking former President Donald Trump‘s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” is a playbook Biden used in the 2022 midterm elections and in his successful 2020 White House bid.
The phrase “ultra-MAGA” Republicans is the result of a six-month study by Democratic messaging guru Anita Dunn that the White House unveiled in early 2022 and used extensively throughout the campaign.
Shining a spotlight on Trump and Trump-aligned GOPers may also be a way to deflect attention from Biden’s own struggling poll numbers. The president’s approval ratings have been stuck mostly in the low 40s since the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, per the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Biden’s approval rating on the economy, the subject of Bidenomics, is worse, coming in at just 38%. That fact has frustrated the administration as it beats the drum that inflation has receded and unemployment remains near historic lows. Yet it’s the Trump-bashing strategy that has been successful to date and could prove so again in 2024.
Republicans derided Biden’s low-key “basement Biden” strategy in 2020 only to see him knock Trump from the White House, and the 2022 campaign, in which Biden mostly focused on the threat of “ultra-MAGA” Republicans, ended with Democrats outperforming expectations.
Focusing on Boebert could be an extension of that approach. The firebrand representative has attracted controversy since entering Congress in 2021, and she infamously was kicked out of a musical in September after vaping, causing a disturbance, and getting fondled by her date. Boebert narrowly won reelection in 2022 and faces a tight race next year as well.
But Republicans, including Boebert herself, are working to shine the spotlight back on Biden and throw the “Bidenomics” tag line back at the White House.
“Families in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District are being crushed by so-called ‘Bidenomics,'” Boebert said ahead of the visit. “On his watch, credit card debt, inflation, groceries, and gas prices have all reached record highs. These high prices are squeezing working class Coloradans and rural America.”
The Republican National Committee sent out an email blast saying that since Biden took office, food prices are up 20.9%, rent up 18%, and electricity 24.7%.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended her boss’s record during a Monday press briefing.
“We’re going to continue to do the work that the president set out to do, and we just talked about supply chains. We just talked about the economy,” she said when pressed on Biden’s polling troubles. “We’ve been talking about the president’s leadership globally, especially in the Middle East. That’s what we’re here to do and focus on. That’s what I’m here to do to focus on. I just can’t speak to people’s decisions.”
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But Biden is reportedly decreasing his push of the “Bidenomics” tag in favor of a return to focusing on the differences between himself and Trump.
Boebert may play as a Trump stand-in during Biden’s Colorado stop as he looks back to the successful strategy of 2020 and 2022.
