For President Joe Biden, the 2024 campaign ended much as it began, in a room full of union members. But this time, he was a surrogate, not the candidate.
Instead of commanding the national spotlight, as he did when he spoke at a union conference in Washington the day he announced his re-election bid in April 2023, his speech at the carpenters union hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Saturday was overshadowed by dueling rallies for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
And rather than the triumphal and defiant defense of his record and a pledge to “finish the job,” Biden’s remarks were sentimental and subdued, so much so that the audience at times seemed to feel compelled to buck up the commander in chief.
“I’m nothing special,” Biden said at one point, leading someone in the audience to respond, “Yes, you are, Joe,” followed by a round of “Thank you, Joe!” chants.
Administration officials are looking forward to the end of the campaign, which they believe will offer Biden the opportunity to move forward with his remaining weeks in office with more freedom, according to multiple sources familiar with the West Wing dynamic. No longer will officials have to coordinate all, or at least most, of their activities with Harris’ official and campaign teams, a daily occurrence since Harris took over the top of the ticket.
Even Biden at times would double-check with senior aides about looming actions, asking, “Have we run this by the vice president?” according to a senior official.
When Biden ended his candidacy in July, he told his staff that he wanted the remaining months of his presidency to be as productive as any similar period before. Plans were drawn up for events and initiatives that advisers felt would both help begin shaping his legacy and boosting Harris’ candidacy.
But the public-facing campaign role Biden had envisioned when he promised to be the Harris-Walz campaign’s “best volunteer” has been limited to just a handful of targeted visits to key states to target working-class and union voters, like the pair of labor-focused events he held in Philadelphia and Scranton over the weekend.
White House officials have worked to accelerate implementing Biden’s domestic legislative achievements, while his national security team has had more time to work with him directly on foreign policy priorities, including the Middle East, which had been a major campaign distraction.
Advisers are working on what Biden’s final weeks, and hours, in office will look like.
There are some early conversations about what’s to come as Biden leaves office, said a senior administration official, including perhaps a twist on the traditional final ride aboard Air Force One for the departing president. Amtrak has said its new fleet of high-speed Acela trains could be on the rails by year’s end, which offers a symbolic departure from Washington for the man whose career began with daily train trips from Delaware when he was a senator and even occasionally as vice president, the official said.
Biden has struggled with being sidelined from the national conversation and of late generating only headlines for off-script remarks about Trump’s being “locked up” and for the clean-up after he seemed to call Trump’s supporters “garbage.”
He has also been echoing his common refrain against Trump. At a recent stop in New Hampshire, Biden shared what worried allies conveyed during his recent trip to Germany. “They’ll pull me aside, one leader after another, quietly, and say, ‘Joe, he can’t win. My democracy is at stake,’” he said.
At the same event, he offered some tempered optimism about the election outcome.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’re about to do in this election,” he said, before he added: “As a friend of mine would say, from my lips to God’s ears on that one.”
Whereas Biden has played a limited role of late, first lady Jill Biden has quietly been among the busiest of campaign surrogates. Since early October, she has held more than two dozen campaign events in all seven battleground states, including three stops Sunday in southeast Pennsylvania.
“I know you can feel it, the excitement of people who are all ready to elect a new generation of leadership,” she said at a union-focused event in King of Prussia.
She hailed Harris as a “decisive, strong leader” who inherited from her mother “the power to create change.” But she also made an argument that other surrogates have largely left to the side, asking the audience at one point: “Are we better off today than we were four years ago?”
“Yes,” she said, rebutting a primary argument of the Trump campaign. “In Donald Trump’s America, our country was shut down because of the pandemic. … Schools were closed, and at every turn Donald Trump created even more chaos.”
Jill Biden continued on to North Carolina on Monday, while her husband returned to the White House, where he will remain through Election Day.
Harris’ first stop on the campaign’s final day was in Scranton, where for the second consecutive day she didn’t once mention Trump’s name.
She also didn’t mention Biden’s.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
