With Election Day just three days away, a striking new message is coming from Democratic candidates in some of the country’s most competitive races: Joe Biden blew it on the border.
According to NBC News, Democrats running in battleground Senate and House contests are now directly criticizing the former president’s handling of border security, an attempt to neutralize what has long been one of their party’s biggest political weaknesses.
Texas: “I called out Joe Biden”
In Texas, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico opens a closing-stretch ad with the line: “I called out Joe Biden for failing us on the border.” Talarico, who is locked in a tight race with Republican Ken Paxton, also said in July that Biden had “failed us on our southern border” when he rolled out his own border security plan.
But critics aren’t buying the makeover. Fox News Digital reported that Talarico’s campaign could not provide an example of him publicly criticizing Biden on the border while Biden was in office. Fox also pointed to a 2019 interview with The Austin Chronicle in which Talarico said Texas was “sending about $800 million per biennium to the border with Mexico for ‘increased border security'” and added, “I’d rather take that money and put it back into public education.”
Kansas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina join in
Talarico isn’t alone. In Kansas, a longtime Republican stronghold, Democrat Adam Hamilton used a debate against Republican Sen. Roger Marshall to say: “I want to be crystal clear, first of all: Immigration at the border under Biden was a disaster. That is how we ended up where we are today.”
In Pennsylvania, Democratic House candidate Paige Cognetti, who is trying to unseat Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan in the Scranton area, said at a debate Thursday night: “The Biden administration failed at the border.” She later added, “The Biden administration did fail. We need to make sure that the border is secure.”
And in South Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews put it even more bluntly in a debate: “Democrats have failed on the border.”
Iowa candidate heads 800 miles to the border
In Iowa, Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek traveled more than 800 miles to Laredo, Texas, to film an ad at the border. “I came to the border to meet firsthand with the people who work to keep it secure,” he says in the ad. “I voted with Republicans to allow law enforcement to arrest and deport criminals.” In an earlier ad, he vowed to “work with anyone,” “including President Trump, to secure the border.”
In Texas’ Republican-leaning 35th Congressional District, Democrat Johnny Garcia, who is running against GOP nominee Carlos De La Cruz, has criticized Trump’s ICE raids, but also said: “We’ve also gotten to see, unfortunately, how Biden got it wrong on the border. I’ll admit that every single day.”
Even Democratic pollsters agree
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told NBC News that distancing from Biden is “very smart” and that “there’s nobody contesting that interpretation” that he blundered on the border.
For years, conservatives warned that the border was out of control. Now, with control of Congress on the line Tuesday, a growing list of Democrats in tough races are saying the same thing. The question voters will answer on November 3 is whether they believe the change of heart.