Joe Biden’s trip to Minnesota on Wednesday is a microcosm for the issues currently bedeviling his presidency.
On the one hand, he is struggling to unite a Democratic electorate strained by his full-throated support for Israel in its war against Hamas. At the same time, he’s suddenly fending off a long-shot primary challenge that highlights voters’ concerns about his age.
A blue state that Republicans have long considered ripe for flipping, Minnesota has a young, diverse Democratic base and a large number of Muslim Americans. The domestic trip to highlight the Biden administration’s investments in rural communities, comes as the conflict between Israel and Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union, dominates the president’s attention.
Biden’s visit follows by days a long-shot challenge from Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. While not seen as a serious contender, Phillips risks undermining Biden’s efforts to lift his standing in polls, where voters punish him over the economy, and to ignite high turnout by key constituencies who can deliver a second term.
In Minnesota, Biden is visiting a state that has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1976 — the longest such run in the country. But he holds only a narrow lead over former President Donald Trump, according to an Emerson College poll last month, with 40% support to 38%. The poll found 14% saying they would back another candidate and 8% were undecided.
Biden won Minnesota by 7 percentage points in 2020, but it was more hotly contested than the final result indicated, with each campaign spending more than $1 million in ads in the final week.
During his visit, Biden will be shadowed by events in the Middle East. The president has offered unwavering support for Israel even as he has cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the fallout from the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and pushed to get more humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.
The war has highlighted domestic political tensions over Middle East policy — not just among Muslim Americans, but also among Arab Americans, two-thirds of whom are Christian, according to James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.
Just 17% of Arab Americans said they would vote for Biden today, down from 59% who supported him in 2020, according to an October poll by the institute released Tuesday. Those figures could also spell trouble for Biden’s campaign in Michigan, another Midwestern battleground that has the US’s second-largest Arab-American population, according to Census data.
Another headwind for the president in Minnesota comes from within his own party.
Phillips, 54, intends to capitalize on that Democratic unease over Biden — already the oldest-ever US president at 80 — and broader voter anxiety over the state of the economy. Almost seven in 10 voters, including 45% of Democrats, think Biden should not run again, an October HarrisX poll conducted for The Messenger found.
The Minnesota trip was scheduled before Phillips announced last week that he would challenge the president, according to a person familiar with the plans, but Biden still hopes to use it as a show of force and party unity. He will stand alongside prominent Minnesota Democrats, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Although Phillips faces a virtually impossible path, his campaign threatens to weaken Biden before what is expected to be a contentious general-election rematch with Trump, the Republican frontrunner. He leads Biden among voters in seven key swing states, according to a recent poll by Bloomberg News and Morning Consult.
People familiar with the president’s reelection bid have largely shrugged off Phillips’s campaign and expressed confidence Biden is neutralizing concerns about his age by directly addressing the issue.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is traveling to the state because he “loves Minnesota.” Asked directly whether he chose Minnesota because of Phillips’s challenge, Jean-Pierre said Biden’s team is “very thrilled and thankful to the congressman for voting with the president almost 100% of the time in the last two years.”
Biden’s staked his reelection prospects on his economic record of “Bidenomics,” though it has yet to resonate with voters. The Minneapolis region is a particularly bright spot for the economy, however.
Home to major corporations including Target Corp., General Mills Inc., Cargill Inc., and 3M Co., the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area has consistently had the lowest inflation rate in the country, now at 2.2%. The state’s unemployment rate is also below the national average of 3.8%. The congressional district Biden is visiting, represented by Democrat Angie Craig, had the lowest childhood poverty rate in the country, according to 2021 census figures.
In May, the Twin Cities became the first major metropolitan area to see annual inflation fall below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Its 1.8% pace of price increases was the lowest of any region that month.
Corey Day, who advised Biden’s campaign in 2020, said he is right not to take the state for granted but that Phillips’ challenge was not a sign of discontent with the president among Minnesota Democrats.
“You’re going to see electeds all the way from dog catcher up to the governor standing behind the president,” Day said.
--With assistance from Jennifer Jacobs and Ella Ceron.
