What does a railroad enthusiast who is sinking in the polls do to boost sentiment?
On Monday, President Joe Biden made the short drive from his beach house in Delaware to an Amtrak maintenance facility, where he announced $16 billion in rail investments from his infrastructure bill.
He said it would help create jobs and improve life for people living along the northeastern rail corridor.
“If this line were shut down for one day, it would cost the American economy $100 million a day,” he said.
Officials believe they have a good news story to sell.
President Joe Biden traveled to Bear, Delaware, on Monday to announce $16 billion in rail spending during a visit to an Amtrak repair shop
The money will go toward repairing bridges and tunnels, as well as improving tracks on Amtrak’s busy northeast corridor.
But it comes as Biden faces new headwinds over his faltering 2024 presidential campaign. A New York Times/Siena College poll shows him trailing former President Donald Trump in five of six key battleground states.
If the results are repeated a year from now, Biden would likely be dumped from the White House after one term.
Polls show voters feel they are doing worse in a Biden economy than under Trump, following a period of strong inflation following the pandemic.
Take a day trip to an Amtrak maintenance center.
Monday’s visit to Bear, Delaware, marks at least the third time the president has held an event to highlight spending on the Northeast Corridor, a line Biden walked daily when he was a senator.
Biden says he has traveled more than a million miles on Amtrak and his local station now bears his name.
“Amtrak wasn’t just a way to get home to family,” Biden said during a speech in Baltimore earlier this year.
“The conductors, the engineers, they literally became my family.”
Biden delivered his address from the front of trains at the Amtrak repair shop
President Joe Biden spent the weekend at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He is seen here after attending mass on Saturday. He will visit an Amtrak maintenance shop on Monday
Biden traveled back and forth to Washington from Wilmington when he was a senator. Here we see him talking to journalists in 2008, when he was a vice presidential candidate
Some of the major projects being raised include $3.8 billion to repair and expand the Hudson River Tunnel between New York and New Jersey, and $4.7 billion for the Frederick Douglass Tunnel connecting Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Virginia connects, eliminating one of the biggest bottlenecks on the line. .
“The bottom line is that these improvements will reduce travel times and improve reliability for the more than 200 million passengers who travel on this rail corridor annually,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
Officials say the bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021 was one of the Biden administration’s most significant legislative successes, proving it was possible to navigate Washington’s gridlocked partisan politics to deliver a trillion dollars in investment.
Polls show they are having a hard time selling the idea to voters.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows Trump with a whopping 10 percentage point lead among voters in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Then VP candidate Biden arrives by train at the Amtrak station in Wilmington that now bears his name in this 2008 file photo
Voters favored Trump over Biden on immigration, national security and today’s Israel Palestine by 12, 12 and 11 points respectively
Biden has a two-point lead in Wisconsin.
He won all six states in 2020.
A second survey found that “Bidenomics,” the White House nickname for the president’s economic policies, failed to impress.
About 51 percent of swing-state voters said they felt the national economy was better off during the Trump years, according to the New Morning Consult/Bloomberg survey.
Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz shrugged off the numbers.
“Predictions a year later often look a little different a year later,” he said before referring to the 2012 election results.
“Don’t take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight-point loss for President Obama, but could win handily a year later.”