Biden in and out of Chicago in a hot minute. No photo op with the mayor.
The war on Gaza has changed everything.
In between his various criminal trials, Trump is on the stump. He’s holding campaign rallies and firing up his base in battleground states. Pres. Biden is not, despite running even with Trump in those very states.
He did pop into Chicago Wednesday, not for any public appearances or rallies, but rather to spend 16 minutes with 80 rich supporters in a meeting room at the Palmer House. He raised $2M but he had to move swiftly to try and evade protesters who dog him at every stop.
I call it a null campaign. It’s still winnable.. But only because he’s running against the world’s most hated and despicable man.
This, from NBC News:
President Joe Biden’s team is increasingly taking extraordinary steps to minimize disruptions from pro-Palestinian protests at his events by making them smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, avoiding college campuses, and, in at least one instance, considering hiring a private company to vet attendees.
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You might think that Biden’s brief visit to Chitown would have provided a mutually beneficial opportunity for a tete-a-tete with Mayor Brandon Johnson. After all, the city is badly in need of federal dollars and Johnson was among the first of the big-city mayors to give full-throated support for Bidenomics during POTUS’ last campaign stop here in July.
I’m guessing that the mayor would also like to have been rubbing elbows with the crowd of Democratic donors inside the Palmer House. And then there’s that little matter of making sure that the upcoming Democratic National Convention here doesn’t turn into a major shit show with the “whole world watching.”
But a lot has changed since July, ‘23 when Biden kicked off his campaign here. This time around, Brandon’s handlers took him as far away from Biden as they could. The mayor ran off to Springfield to lobby the legislature for a couple of billion bucks to pay for schools and another Bears football stadium on the city’s lakefront. See my post on Johnson’s Folly.
Israel’s war on Gaza, subsidized by the US, has changed everything. It’s made even a photo op between the two Democrats out of the question with Johnson drawing the ire of the Israel lobby and rabid genocide supporters, like Ald. Debra Silverstein after he cast the tie-breaking vote on the City Council’s Ceasefire Resolution back in January.
Biden is depending on millions in campaign contributions from those same Israel supporters in exchange for his underwriting of the assault on Gaza. And the last thing Brandon needs right now is a photo-op with Biden and his 38% approval rating (which is still about 10 points higher than his own).
It has been asked elsewhere if the Democrats might end up holding their convention virtually. At this point, I would say there is little possibility of this.