Former President Joe Biden has been largely absent from the campaign trail as Democrats fight to win back House and Senate majorities in November, even as former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris step up efforts to boost the party’s candidates. Biden, 83, has kept a limited public schedule while battling advanced, metastatic prostate cancer. He has endorsed candidates and is helping Democrats raise money, according to a source in Biden's political circle.
But the former president has made few political appearances this year. The contrast is increasingly visible with four weeks to go until Election Day. Obama is cutting ads for Senate and gubernatorial candidates, helping the party fundraise and preparing to hit the trail during the closing stretch of the midterm campaign.
Harris, the Democrats' 2024 presidential nominee, is also campaigning across key battleground states, including a recent stop in Michigan with Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. MIDTERM MATH: THE THREE FORCES THAT COULD STOP A DEMOCRATIC BLUE WAVE Biden has appeared at just a handful of political events this year. He spoke in February at a reception honoring his 2020 South Carolina primary victory, which propelled him toward the Democratic nomination and eventually the presidency.
In June, he addressed a Maryland Democratic Party event. Longtime Democratic strategist Michael Ceraso told Fox News Digital that some in the party's elite and fundraising class are concerned that "if Biden were to be pushed out there in any sort of way for virtual or in-person opportunities, he could be a liability." Veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona had a different take, telling Fox News Digital, "there are still a ton of Americans who love Joe Biden." Biden did weigh in on a handful of Democratic primary showdowns this cycle. The former president endorsed former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor.
Bottoms, who later served as a senior advisor in the Biden administration, won the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nomination. The former president also backed Dan Koh, another Biden administration veteran, who captured the Democratic nomination in Massachusetts' 6th Congressional District. HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING ON FORMER PRESIDENT BIDEN Biden is also advocating on behalf of efforts to secure democracy.
"American democracy begins and ends at the ballot box. There is no more important civic duty nor fundamental right to be defended," the former president wrote on social media last month, as he cast his ballot in his home state of Delaware's primary. "Voting defines our freedom and makes everything possible." But mostly, Biden has served as a foil for President Donald Trump, who Biden ousted from the White House in the 2020 election.
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