CNN
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President Joe Biden on Wednesday sought to draw a direct line between his signature legislative accomplishments and digging into the ground in a bid to curry favor with voters dissatisfied with the overall economy, and Donald Trump. I tried to draw a direct contrast with Mr.
Biden announced a $3.3 billion investment from Microsoft in the same location where then-President Trump used a golden shovel to break ground on electronics in 2018 in what was supposed to be the flagship project of his administration. announced the construction of a new artificial intelligence facility in For its Foxconn factory in Taiwan, the company had secured billions of dollars in tax credits and promised thousands of jobs.
Most of these investments never materialized. And in remarks Wednesday, Biden directly blamed Trump for that failure.
Trump, Biden “along with Sen. Ron Johnson literally came here with a shovel of gold and promised to build the eighth wonder of the world.”
“Are you kidding me? Look what happened. They dug a hole with a golden shovel, and it fell into it,” the president said.
“Foxconn turned out to be a real fraud,” Biden added. “Please go.”
Racine County, a vast area located between Chicago and Milwaukee, has been at the center of intense local political debate over development through successive elections. Residents who live and work nearby told CNN they are happy to see the project and jobs, but there is little guarantee that their financial worries will be alleviated.
“What happens to interest rates, what happens to the overall economy,” said Dave Flannery, whose family operates the Apple Holler orchard and farm just a few miles from where Biden is scheduled to visit. We don’t know and the situation is really uncertain.” on wednesday. “Personally, I’m very optimistic about our future, but it’s also very scary at times.”
Tom Oberhaus, whose family owns Cozy Nook Farm about an hour outside Waukesha, said inflation is one of the biggest criticisms of the Biden administration. Although he is not a big fan of President Trump and would like to see a Republican alternative, he said he would be willing to return to Trump-era economic policies.
“You get paid and it looks great, but when you actually pay the bills, you’re like, ‘Wow, it’s all gone,'” Oberhaus said. “For me, inflation is the most important economic issue.”
Asked if it was fair to put all the blame on Biden, Oberhaus said, “They are the administration in power.”
Biden told some Democrats at the beginning of his term that he intended to be the “most progressive president since FDR,” the architect of the New Deal.
Mr. Biden has spent the past two years touting trillions of dollars in infrastructure and construction spending brought about by legislation he signed, much of which passed Congress on a bipartisan basis. But leading economists argue that the very money that helped spur economic growth is causing prices to rise, clouding Biden’s ability to sell those gains to voters.
“It’s important that he comes here and takes his economic message to heart and makes it real to the people,” Mandela Burns, the state’s former lieutenant governor, told CNN. “Some people are still thinking about the $1,500 check they got from President Trump.”
CNN’s latest poll shows that Biden’s approval ratings on the economy (34%) and inflation (29%) remain significantly negative, with voters focusing more on the economy than they did under the past two presidents when choosing a candidate. concerns are more important. Contest.
As Mr. Biden addresses unfinished business from his 2020 campaign and calls on voters to “get the job done” in 2024, several outside advisers and donors are raising concerns that the president is moving too far to the left. They have expressed concern that this may not be the case. Concerns: The platform, which includes big-ticket proposals such as universal kindergarten, subsidized health care for children and the elderly, and expanded health insurance, is less responsive to the demands of moderates than the party’s base.
“One-eighth of one percent of the population is going to decide this election,” one longtime Biden donor told CNN on condition of anonymity to share confidential conversations with the campaign. . “I told them to move closer to the middle.”
But Biden is also still working to shore up his progressive base, a challenge complicated by growing anger over his administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
“Americans deserve a president who cares about them, and President Biden has that. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has slashed Social Security and Medicare and increased health care costs for ordinary Americans. , is proudly running for sending jobs overseas,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement to CNN.
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President Joe Biden speaks about his investment agenda in the United States at Gateway Technical College in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, May 8, 2024.
Wednesday was Biden’s fourth visit to Wisconsin this year, illustrating how central the state is to the president’s re-election roadmap. Wisconsin, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, are pillars of the so-called Blue Wall, all three states won by Trump in 2016 and then reversed by Biden four years later.
In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin by less than 21,000 votes. And with a similarly close margin expected in choosing a winner in 2024, several advisers and former Biden officials are calling for moderates and the right policy tone this year without alienating the party’s base. He says that is the most important thing.
“I think that’s the No. 1 question,” the former Biden adviser says of the debate over how progressive the president’s approach will shape. “The answer to that question is whether or not Biden will win the election.”
The Biden campaign and its allies don’t think so, citing polling that shows the president’s policies are popular among his party’s most loyal voters and independents. The White House cites numbers from Navigator, a Democratic polling company that describes itself as a “source of information for progressives,” as informing its view of the topic’s popularity. In April, Navigator polled 1,000 voters about Biden’s State of the Union policies and found widespread support.
“Biden doesn’t have to choose between a progressive path and a moderate path,” said Bharat Ramamurti, Biden’s former deputy director of the National Economic Council. “The agenda he has pursued is the path of consensus.”
As Democratic priorities evolved, the consensus took different forms, at times requiring Biden to shift his position to the left.
The self-described financier vowed during his 2020 election campaign not to demonize the wealthy. Immediately after his inauguration, Mr. Biden began repeatedly pushing for policies to tax the wealthy and corporations, a shift that grew out of a “unified task force” his campaign set up to seek input from progressive economists. is.
Perhaps no policy better represents this shift than student loan forgiveness. During the 2020 campaign, Biden began supporting only the most limited forms of student loan forgiveness, including forgiveness if the borrower declares bankruptcy or dies.
However, in March 2020, on the eve of a debate with progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had proposed a complete cancellation of student loans, Mr. Biden broadened his stance on loan forgiveness. And Biden, as president, voiced his support for his income-based exemption that would cancel more than $360 billion in government loans.
The plan was blocked by the Supreme Court, but Mr. Biden used regulators and federal agencies to cancel about $146 billion in student loans.
“During the campaign, I never felt like that’s what he really wanted to do,” said a former Biden adviser. “And now it’s one of his main economic agendas.”
Individual issues such as student loan forgiveness tend to be more popular with voters, especially younger voters whose monthly payments make up a large portion of their take-home income. The White House has cited focus group research conducted by Navigator, a company run by former Democratic campaign officials, as evidence that voters want more government action on student debt.
But when considered against the backdrop of other issues and through the lens of Biden’s approval ratings, the numbers tell a different story.
A KFF poll from earlier this year found that just 32% of registered voters said it was very important for presidential candidates to talk about student loan debt, and that inflation was a very important issue. 83% think the same about inflation, significantly lower than the 80% who think the same way about inflation. He was 72% of people who think the affordability of health care and the future of our democracy are less important.
An independent poll conducted by CNN last month found that 24% of respondents said student loans were a very important issue in choosing a president, compared to 65% who said the economy was the most important issue. It dropped significantly.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Tom Oberhaus’ last name.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, MJ Lee, Camila Decharas and Michael Williams contributed to this report.
