Biden aims to shore up support in the Midwest after the Democratic nomination
By Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden visited the state of Wisconsin on Wednesday after winning the Democratic Party nomination and focused on hunting votes among suburban women, black voters and Latinos across the Midwest.
Biden announced more than $3 billion in infrastructure investments in disadvantaged communities in 40 states, to be funded through the bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Act
He said the projects will help repair neighborhoods in states like Wisconsin where black, Hispanic and Chinese communities were isolated years ago by major highways and roads.
“I'm here to announce a first-of-its-kind investment … to help right historical wrongs,” Biden said. “These are life-changing improvements,” he added.
During the speech, Biden also opened local campaign headquarters and touted his administration's economic policies, a strategy that has so far failed to win over many potential voters.
Biden said there was “a lot at stake” and his campaign would be “knocking on doors” in Wisconsin and several other states. On Thursday, Biden plans to travel to Michigan, part of a month-long “I'm on board” of top administration officials aimed at rallying supporters in the seven battleground states that could decide the 2024 election. Last week, Biden was in Pennsylvania, Georgia and New Hampshire.
On Tuesday, the Biden campaign released a new video titled “Let's Go” after voters in Georgia helped the 81-year-old incumbent secure the last of the 1,968 delegates needed for the nomination, setting up what would be the first presidential runoff. race in the USA. almost 70 years.
In Wisconsin, Biden continued to attack former President Donald Trump, 77, and what he called Trump's “campaign of resentment, revenge and retribution that threatens the very idea of America.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris, who campaigned in Colorado on Tuesday, visited Wisconsin last week to blast the White House's economic policies and talk about apprenticeships and “good-paying union jobs.”
“Now, the general election really begins, and the contrast could not be clearer,” Harris said in a statement Tuesday.
Wisconsin is a politically important state that the Biden team wants to win in November to collect the 270 electoral votes needed for re-election. Biden won the state of nearly six million people in 2020 by less than one percentage point.
Wisconsin and Michigan are part of the “blue wall,” along with Pennsylvania, that Biden will need to hold to secure a second term. In 2016, Trump overturned all three to win the White House, but Biden took them back four years ago.
About a hundred protesters waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Free, free Palestine” gathered near Biden's campaign headquarters in Milwaukee.
Demonstrators took to the streets earlier to protest Biden's response to Israel's war on Gaza, which was sparked by an October 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas that killed an estimated 1,200 people.
More than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed as a result of Israel's military response, according to Palestinian authorities, and the war has angered some of Biden's core voters, including young and left-wing progressives.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Angus MacSwan and David Gregorio)
