Vulnerable Democrats distance themselves from Biden ahead of midterms

One of the longest-serving Democrats in the House has broken with President Joe Biden in her latest campaign advert, apparently because of fears the association may harm her chances of reelection.

In a television spot, Marcy Kaptur, Representative for Ohio, lambasted Mr Biden for “letting Ohio solar manufacturers be undercut by China,” and ended by saying “Marcy Kaptur: She doesn’t work for Joe Biden. She works for you.”

Ms Kaptur is the second-most tenured woman in congressional history and the most prominent Democrat to break with Mr Biden, who has seen his approval ratings slump in recent months.

The advert may come as a surprise to Mr Biden, who just last month was pictured during a visit to Cleveland kissing Ms Kaptur’s hand as she smiled broadly. She later released a statement praising the president and his accomplishments, saying. "A lot can happen in two years, but if President Biden is the nominee I will support him.”

Ms Kaptur, 76, faces her toughest contest since she was first elected in 1982. Ohio’s state legislature made her re-election path more difficult by redrawing the district to include more Republican voters. The redrawing turned the district from one that Mr Biden easily won in 2020 to one that former President Donald Trump would have carried that year.

Her opponent, JR Majewski, a first-time candidate who has denied the result of the 2020 election, won the May GOP primary and former President Donald Trump’s support.

In her new ad, Ms Kaptur says that while she has been “fighting back” against Mr Biden, she has also been “working with Republican Rob Portman,” the state’s retiring senator.

Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who in 2020 won the most pro-Trump House seat of any Democrat in the nation, aired an ad earlier this month positioning himself as an “independent voice” and saying he had voted against “trillions of dollars of President Biden’s agenda because I knew it would make inflation worse.”

Democrat left-winger, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in June refused to endorse the 79-year-old as the party’s presidential candidate in 2024, when he would be 82.

Mr Biden is suffering the worst approval ratings of any modern president at this stage of his first term - hit by astronomical inflation numbers and foreign policy failings.

However, his polling has stabilised in recent weeks as the Democrats get agenda-setting legislation passed.

A Fox News survey out last week was encouraging for the Democrats’s prospects in the upcoming elections. After months of more enthusiasm among Republicans than Democrats in the poll, party preference for this year’s congressional races are now evenly split, 41 per cent to 41 per cent.

The political environment still remains unfavourable for Democrats and conventional wisdom has it that the president’s party tends to struggle in the midterms.