Joe Biden in ‘Trump land’, as Liz Cheney backs the Democrats

The US President’s campaigning outside Miami came as Republican Liz Cheney lent her support to two Democrats.

Liz Cheney appears on the hustings for Democrat Representative Elissa Slotkin in Lansing, Michigan, on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden struck out against Republicans on social spending issues in popular retirement spot Florida overnight on Tuesday, local time, as the US President makes his closing pitch ahead of next week’s crucial midterm elections.

The US President’s campaigning outside Miami came as Republican Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest critics, lent her support to two Democrats battling for key swing seats.

During separate events in the midwest states of Ohio and Michigan, Ms Cheney expressed support for Democratic candidates as a bulwark against her own party’s lurch toward Trump, whom she argues is a threat to democracy.

In Ohio’s Senate race, Ms Cheney said in Cleveland that she preferred Democrat candidate Tim Ryan over Republican JD Vance, who once fiercely opposed Mr Trump but has since changed his tune. Ms Cheney later travelled to Lansing, Michigan, to attend a campaign event with candidate Elissa Slotkin, also a Democrat, whom the Republican had officially endorsed a few days earlier.

Facing signs of a growing “red wave” that could sweep the opposition Republicans to power in the House and Senate, Mr Biden has been attempting with mixed success to court the blue-collar vote. “You’ve been paying for Social Security your whole life,” the Democrat leader said, speaking in the coastal city of Hallandale Beach, about 30km north of Miami. “You earned it,” he said, referring to the benefits program for retirees. “Now these guys want to take it away. Who in the hell do they think they are?”

He warned against a proposal from Florida Republican senator Rick Scott, who suggested putting social security – which began in the 1930s – and Medicare, the state-funded health insurance for people over 65, which has been in place since the 1960s, to a congressional vote every five years.

After the formal speech, Mr Biden donned his Democratic Party leadership hat for fundraising events for his party’s Florida gubernatorial and Senate candidates, Charlie Crist and Val Demings, who are both expected to lose.

A daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney – and once seen as the tax-cutting, gun-loving, God-fearing, small-government apotheosis of American conservatism – Liz Cheney has been disowned by her own party.

After refusing to accept Mr Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election, she has played a leading role on the congressional committee investigating the former president’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

As a result of her advocacy against Mr Trump, she was booted out of the leadership of the party and lost a primary contest in her home state of Wyoming this year.

AFP