Washington Examiner, March 2021
Joe Biden promised to be “a president for all Americans” during his acceptance speech last fall, yet the trips he has made since moving into the White House suggest he is mostly focused on keeping battleground states blue.
Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and second gentlemen Doug Emhoff, along with a cadre of Cabinet officials and Democratic lawmakers, will fan out across the country, starting next week, to promote the administration’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package.
But the president’s planned stops next week in Georgia and Pennsylvania are raising eyebrows given those states’ electoral significance. And they will come after the president’s earlier visits to Michigan and Wisconsin, two Rust Belt battlegrounds, to tour a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing plant and participate in a nationally televised town hall.
Biden sweeping the Electoral College votes of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin last November returned the presidency to Democratic hands, rebuilding the so-called “blue wall” former President Donald Trump tore down in 2016. After multiple recounts, taking Georgia, a Republican stronghold since 1992, decisively handed Biden the 2020 Electoral College.
