Departing President Joe Biden on Monday rejected allegations he has been ignored and abandoned by Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, confidently asserting he was bound for his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, to prove the doubters wrong.
AP reports Biden, in an exchange with reporters, played down the fact he hasn’t campaigned side-by-side with Harris since their joint Labor Day campaign appearance in Pittsburgh and he’s held few public campaign appearances with Democrats in the competitive races that could turn the voting tide.
“I’ve done a lot of surrogate stuff, and the fact of the matter is that I’ve also had to continue to be president at the same time,” the octogenarian told media representatives after casting his early vote on Monday in his home state of Delaware.
Biden maintained he and Harris still “talk all the time.” He added he has also made several visits to battleground states in his official capacity in recent months, and he plans to do more campaigning in the days ahead in Pennsylvania, including his childhood hometown of Scranton (population 75,682).
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Biden’s claim of relevancy to the Harris campaign defies other reports he is simply being ignored as the nowhere man, as Breitbart News reported.
Three people told Axios the Harris campaign keeps saying they’ll get back to Trump’s team on when to send him out into the field – and then simply move on.
The Harris campaign views Biden as a political liability since his defenestration but doesn’t want to say directly they have no need for his efforts.
Democrats and some of Biden’s staff keep walking on eggshells around Biden’s delicate sensibilities even as he delivers obscure and sometimes self-contradictory attacks when he is allowed out for campaigning.
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One person said it’s like a slow-moving break-up, with Harris’s team respecting Biden, but don’t want to connect a president with a 39 percent approval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight average, to their candidate who’s in a historically close race.
“He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward,” one person told Axios, referencing Harris’s slogan.
With Election Day a week away, there are currently no events scheduled for Biden, 81, and Harris, 60, to campaign together.
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