President Joe Biden spoke to a crowd of over 1,000 attendees at Sherman Middle School in Madison on Friday, quelling rumors that he plans to drop out of his reelection campaign.
“Let me say this as clear as I can, I’m staying in the race,” Biden said at Friday’s rally.
Biden responded to criticisms about his age and poor debate performance by touting his accomplishments in office. He said he created 15 million jobs and installed a federal price cap on insulin during his first term.
“When you get knocked down, you get back up. I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out three and a half years of work,” Biden said.
Biden condemns presidential immunity ruling
Biden criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of “presidential immunity” for Donald Trump, which shields him from prosecution for official acts taken while in office. The ruling specified this immunity covers Trump’s attempts to convince Justice Department officials to pursue unfounded claims of election fraud after the 2020 presidential election.
He called the Supreme Court's decision a “dangerous precedent,” arguing the ruling could provide Trump with future grounds to “physically take out his opponents, take bribes or lead a coup.”
The stakes in Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a key battleground state in the 2024 election. In 2020, Biden won the swing state by 0.6% of votes, while Trump had previously won it by around 0.7% in 2016.
Wisconsin has seen numerous visits this year from the Biden-Harris administration in an attempt to shore up support in the state ahead of the presidential election in November.
This year, Biden has already made two prior visits to Wisconsin. He last visited the state in April, where he introduced a new program to relieve student debt, an issue that impacts more than 700,000 Wisconsin residents. In May, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Milwaukee to discuss efforts to bridge the homeownership gap and promote small businesses.
The Trump campaign is not far behind. The former president visited Green Bay and Racine this year, with plans to appear in Milwaukee mid-July at the Republican National Convention.
Anti-war protests
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the uninstructed vote coalition Listen to Wisconsin held a nearby rally on Friday against Biden’s reelection campaign due to his administration’s provision of aid to Israel. Protestors outside the middle school shouted, “we won’t vote for genocide.”
Around 32% of voters in University of Wisconsin-Madison-area wards voted uninstructed in last April’s Democratic primary in a warning to the Biden administration, which relied on youth turnout to achieve its narrow victory in 2020.
A YouGov poll in late May showed that roughly one in five Democratic and independent voters in Wisconsin considered themselves “less likely” to vote for Biden in November due to his response toward the war in Gaza.
Sreejita Patra is a senior staff writer and the former summer ad sales manager for The Daily Cardinal. She has written for breaking news, campus news and arts and has done extensive reporting on the 2024 presidential race. She also covered the Oregon Village Board for the Oregon Observer.
