The Memo: Democrats in tough races stiff-arm Biden

Democrats in some of the nation’s battleground races are trying to separate themselves from President Biden.

It’s likely a necessary tactic. But it’s also a difficult needle to thread, given that Democratic candidates need to energize the party’s base while also winning the backing of moderate voters.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) offered the most prominent example yet of the trend on Monday evening, when he reiterated his belief that Biden, 79, should not run for a second term during a debate with Republican J.D. Vance.

“I’ve been very clear. I’d like to see a generational change,” Ryan said at the debate in Cleveland. Ryan and Vance are vying for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R).

Ryan also took aim at Vice President Harris and her recent assertion that the southern border is secure.

“Kamala Harris is absolutely wrong on that. It’s not secure,” Ryan said. “I’m not here to just get in a fight or just toe the Democratic Party line. I’m here to speak the truth.”

The border was also on the mind of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) at his debate last week with Republican opponent Blake Masters.

Kelly called the situation on the border a “mess” and linked his view of that particular issue to a broader willingness to buck the administration. 

“When Democrats are wrong, like on the border, I call them out on it, because I’m always going to stick up for Arizona,” Kelly said at the debate.

Kelly went on to note he had also dissented from Biden’s restrictions on new oil and gas leases. “I told him he was wrong,” Kelly said. 

Other candidates have sounded similar notes, though without being quite so emphatic.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the Democratic Party needs “new blood” — while also saying that she would support Biden if he sought a second term.

Slotkin is one of a handful of House Democrats who represent districts that were carried by former President Trump in the 2020 election.

These battleground moves are striking because they keep the fires of speculation burning around whether Biden will, or should, seek a second term. Statements of Democratic dissent on emotive topics like immigration are also sure to be seized on by Republicans at a national level as they try to make a broad case against the president.

But Democratic candidates in competitive states and districts may have little choice, given Biden’s mediocre approval ratings. 

The president’s job performance draws the support of about 42 percent of Americans, by contrast to the 52 percent who disapprove, according to the weighted average maintained by data and polling site FiveThirtyEight.

“Look, I think President Biden has been around long enough to understand the practicalities of where people need to be politically,” Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky told this column.

“A president has to get elected across a cross-section of the country — he can’t just win border states or ‘coastal elite’ states,” Roginsky added. “But Mark Kelly has one job, which is to win Arizona. Tim Ryan has one job, which is to win Ohio.”

There are specific challenges there for each man. 

Biden won Arizona in 2020, but he did so by less than half a percentage point — and was the first Democrat to carry the state since former President Clinton in 1996. 

Ryan, who like Kelly endorsed Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, has an even steeper hill to climb. 

Ohio, seen as a presidential bellwether for many decades, has trended Republican in recent years. Even though former President Obama carried it twice, so too did former President Trump — and by comfortable margins — in both 2016 and 2020.

“Ohio is now considered to be more of a red state,” said Ohio-based Democratic strategist Jerry Austin. “So what [Ryan] is doing is saying, ‘My voting record shows I vote with my constituents. When I think the White House is right, I vote with them; and when I think they are wrong, I vote against them.’ ”

However, Democratic candidates hoping to run district- or state-specific campaigns have to deal with a president — and vice president — who are increasingly willing to insert themselves into the midterms campaign.

Biden, who has hit out at Trump-style Republicans several times recently, was scheduled to be interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. He gave an interview to CBS’s “60 Minutes” last month.

Harris made a rare late-night talk show appearance on Monday night, on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” In the interview, she contended that Republican governors who were transporting migrants to Democratic-run areas of the country were guilty of “an absolute dereliction of duty.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are eager to connect vulnerable Democrats as closely as possible to the president. 

The House Republicans’ campaign arm this week, for example, is targeting Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) with an ad that begins with the words “Cindy Axne & Joe Biden” emblazoned across the screen, together with the charge that they support doubling the size of the IRS.

Axne, like Slotkin, represents a district Trump carried in 2020.

Democratic candidates in purple districts and states might have a route to victory by proudly proclaiming their independence. 

But the path is narrow, uncertain and hard to navigate.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.