The White House is considering sending Biden to the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this week after meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday as he and his advisers try to shore up support and move past his dismal debate performance, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Governors will attend Wednesday’s meeting in person at the White House and also online, according to one of the people and another person briefed on the plans. The governors, who have been some of Biden’s staunchest supporters during his presidency and include potential candidates to succeed him, hold their own virtual meeting on Monday.
On a conference call Monday, several of those governors expressed frustration with the situation and the lack of direct contact with Biden, according to a person familiar with the matter. The call lasted about an hour and was not attended by their staff. Some public officials who have supported Biden have privately complained that he is living in a kind of vacuum, exacerbating the current insecurity facing Democrats.
Biden’s advisers have discussed a possible visit to Wisconsin on Friday and to Pennsylvania on Sunday, one of the battleground states where opinion polls show Biden has the strongest advantage, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The president’s advisers have been urged by many of his allies to increase his presence in the debate’s aftermath. The president held an event in North Carolina on Friday but, outside of a fundraiser, did not hold any public events until Monday evening, when he commented on the Supreme Court’s decision granting partial criminal immunity to former President Donald J. Trump. The president issued his statement more than nine hours after the decision was made public and did not answer questions from reporters.
The White House has repeatedly deployed several Democratic governors to surrogate for Biden and to combat questions about his age, which have exploded since Biden’s halting, whispered performance in a debate with his predecessor and challenger, Trump.
At the same time, some of these governors — younger and more experienced in the pandemic — are regularly named as possible successors to Biden if he decides not to continue as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee in 2024, an idea that seems unlikely to Biden’s closest supporters at this point.
