President Joe Biden was back in battleground Wisconsin on Wednesday pushing his jobs agenda, but his predecessor’s legal issues and Israel’s actions in Gaza hung over his visit.
Biden’s stop in the Racine area to announce a $3.3 billion project by Microsoft to build an artificial intelligence data center was part of a surreal week during which a key ally, Israel, defied his pleas to avoid sending military troops into refugee-packed Rafah in Gaza. It also came one day after a criminal jury and voters heard the first-ever accounts in a courtroom of an adult film star testifying about an alleged sexual encounter with one of the country’s 46 presidents, Donald Trump.
Polling shows why Biden was back in Wisconsin just one week after Trump was campaigning there. Trump had a 1.8 percentage-point lead there in the RealClear polling average Wednesday and a 2.8-point lead in the FiveThirtyEight average. Biden won the state in 2020, with GOP and Democratic strategists saying neither presumed nominee has a clear path to victory in November without the Badger State.
