Battleground Democrats Blame Biden’s Border Record as Midterms Near

With three days to go before the midterms, Democratic candidates in competitive races are openly faulting Joe Biden’s handling of the southern border, NBC News reported Saturday, in an effort to neutralize what many strategists still see as a Democratic weakness.

NBC cited several examples. James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, says in a recent ad that he called out Biden for failing on the border. Paige Cognetti, who is challenging Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania, said at a Thursday debate that the Biden administration failed at the border, and later added that the border must be secure and that pathways to citizenship must exist. Josh Turek, a Democratic Senate candidate in Iowa, traveled more than 800 miles to Laredo, Texas, to film an ad backing tougher enforcement. Annie Andrews in South Carolina and Adam Hamilton in Kansas have also criticized Democrats’ or Biden’s record in debates, according to NBC.

Republicans and some of their allies dispute that the shift is genuine. Fox News Digital reported that when it asked Talarico’s campaign for an example of him criticizing Biden on the border during Biden’s presidency, the campaign could not provide one, and that a 2019 interview had him calling for cutting Texas border security funding. Fox also reported that the Border Patrol union rejected his claim. NBC wrote that Republicans continue to accuse Democrats of promoting open borders to energize their base and win swing voters.

Democratic strategists say the move is deliberate. Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, told NBC it is very smart for candidates to distance themselves from Biden and that no one contests the view that he blundered on the border. She said she recommends a message of some control of the border plus a humanitarian process for immigration, and that Trump’s enforcement has gone too far and backfired.

That second half matters to the candidates’ strategy. NBC reported that Democrats in districts Trump won pair their Biden criticism with attacks on the president’s enforcement, which it said has soured many Americans after immigration officers fatally shot two Americans in Minnesota and one in Maine this year. NBC also reported that border security remains one of Trump’s highest-polling issues, though below its levels early in his second term; it cited no specific survey, and neither does this report.

The political backdrop is the surge in border crossings during Biden’s presidency, which NBC said followed a pandemic-era rise that grew after he rolled back Trump-era restrictions. For Republicans, the candidates’ new rhetoric is an admission about that record. For Democrats, it is an attempt to run on securing the border without owning the last administration’s choices.