Politico

President Joe Biden on Thursday declared a “historic” breakthrough with congressional Democrats toward passing his signature Build Back Better agenda, launching a sales job for legislation that is yet to be written and remains in limbo on Capitol Hill.

“After months of tough and thoughtful negotiations, I think we have an historic — I know we have a historic economic framework,” Biden said in a speech delivered from the White House on Thursday. “Any single element of this framework would fundamentally be viewed as a fundamental change in America. Taken together, they’re truly consequential,” the president said.

Although Biden positioned the framework he presented to Congress earlier in the day as essentially a done deal, numerous hurdles and significant internal discord remain for Democratic lawmakers who have spent weeks in painstaking negotiations on the massive social spending package.

“No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is,” the president said.

Biden’s speech came hours after the president ventured to Capitol Hill to rally Democrats, particularly progressives who have seen numerous favored proposals whittled down or fall by the wayside in intraparty negotiations geared in large part towards appeasing two key Senate holdouts.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), one half of that pair, lauded the “significant progress” toward an agreement but noted in a Thursday statement there was still work left outstanding.

“I look forward to getting this done, expanding economic opportunities and helping everyday families get ahead,” she said.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus huddled not long after Biden departed, though members gave little indication that Thursday’s development has assuaged their qualms. The ongoing wrangling over the social spending package has also held up the $550 billion infrastructure bill that passed the Senate on a bipartisan basis, much to the consternation of a faction of Democratic House moderates who were promised a vote more than a month ago.

The White House and Democratic congressional leadership have been determined to show signs of progress on the trillion-plus agenda item in time for Biden’s trip to Europe, for which he was scheduled to depart soon after his remarks concluded.

“No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is,” he said. “I know it’s hard. I know how deeply people feel about the things that they fight for. But this framework includes historic investments in our nation and in our people.”

Progressives are once again threatening to tank their party’s infrastructure bill ahead of a key deadline, with President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda on the line. This time Democratic leaders believe they have a secret weapon: Biden himself.

Biden will join House Democrats on Capitol Hill Thursday morning for a high-stakes sales pitch to resistant progressives, asking them to support a bipartisan infrastructure framework, although a final agreement on the party’s broader social spending bill remains out of reach without clear liberal buy-in.

But even as Biden sandwiched the Hill visit and follow-up White House remarks into an already-packed schedule that includes departing for a major foreign trip, some liberals were digging in. They’re insisting his bully pulpit wouldn’t be enough to get their votes right away.

Biden “can leave with an agreement of where we need to be and we can vote on the full bill next week,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The Biden huddle is a little bit of déjà vu. In many ways Democrats are reliving the nightmarish week in late September when liberal objections forced House leadership to scuttle a vote on the Senate-passed infrastructure bill, enraging the party’s centrists. Biden yielded to progressives’ demands during a visit to the Hill four weeks ago, rather than leaning on his left flank to support the bipartisan bill.

Democrats are hoping Biden arrives in the Capitol Thursday morning with a much more urgent message for liberals, who are once again vowing to block that infrastructure bill if it doesn’t move in tandem with his broader social spending plan.

Top Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had hoped the president’s trip would be a triumphant one after they clinched an agreement on the roughly $1.75 trillion social spending bill with moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). But that deal remained elusive Thursday morning as progressives balked at the prospect of cutting many of their priorities from the final negotiations.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) returned from a meeting with Biden Wednesday evening saying it was “inconceivable” he would agree to a package that was missing critical progressive goals — from Medicare expansion to prescription drug reform to paid leave — all because two centrist holdouts object.

“The minority should not be dictating to the majority,” Sanders told reporters.

One Democratic source close to progressive lawmakers said Thursday morning that they had concerns that Sinema and Manchin still have not yet committed to voting for the bill. This source added that Sanders has told House progressives he supported their position to hold off on advancing the infrastructure bill unless it and the social spending bill at the same time through their chamber.

“This is exactly why we need legislative text and all parties fully agreed to that bill text,” the source said, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity.

Still, Democratic leaders including Biden, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are hoping they can secure a deal this week, paving the way for progressives to support the $550 billion infrastructure bill that cleared the Senate nearly three months ago.

Sanders’ backing will be key to unlocking progressive votes in the House, where Pelosi can only lose three Democrats on any piece of legislation. Senior Democrats hope if the upper chamber’s liberal leader signs onto the plan, his House allies will feel comfortable enough to relent on the infrastructure bill.

“I think it’s going to be necessary for the president to look them in the eye,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said of his members, and say: “‘I believe, having talked to Manchin and having talked to Sinema, if this framework is passed, they will pass [the social spending bill] in the Senate.”

But even with a strong push from Biden, it will take some wrangling.

Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus insist that roughly 30 of their members need to see an ironclad commitment that both Manchin and Sinema will vote for the party-line spending plan, along with legislative text at a minimum. A group of roughly 10 to 15 Democrats also say they’ll be satisfied with nothing less than a full House vote on the broader social policy bill, according to multiple sources close to the discussions.

“Right now, there are over three dozen members who feel strongly” about securing more than a framework, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who leads the progressive caucus. “And that number is only increasing.”

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), another one of progressives’ vote-counters, added that “nothing’s changed for dozens of progressives.”

Still, senior Democrats are skeptical that dozens of progressives would be willing to block one of Biden’s biggest priorities at a time when he badly needs a win. Anxiety has risen across the party as Biden’s priorities languish in Congress, particularly before a pair of global summits and two key gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey next week.

Even so, the liberal backlash could be a problem for House Democratic leaders as they try to tee up an infrastructure vote this week. If the group of roughly 15 liberals does hold out, Democrats would need to make up those defections with GOP votes. But senior Democrats caution that those votes are less reliable, with some Republicans likely unwilling to vote in favor until Democrats can put up the numbers on their own.

Earlier this summer, House Republicans predicted that more than 20 of their members would easily vote for the infrastructure package, which won approval from 19 GOP senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Multiple House Republicans who support the bipartisan infrastructure bill estimate that they are now hovering around 10 GOP votes for the Senate-approved legislation.

Sources say Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), co-chairs of the Problem Solvers Caucus, are again working behind the scenes to get more Republican supporters for the infrastructure bill after initially pausing informal whip efforts while Democrats’ negotiations stalled.

Jayapal and her whip team have spent the last several days phoning their members to take their temperatures on the emerging deal. They’ve also made their position clear to the White House, informing staff that they are willing to publicly cheer a deal — even standing side-by-side with Manchin and Sinema, if needed — to lend Biden momentum as he jets off to Europe.

But Jayapal and her allies say at least 30 members of the group are refusing to advance infrastructure unless the broader spending deal moves in tow.

“The speaker knows how to count votes,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). “I don’t think she’s going to bring it for a vote until she knows she can win it, and she has Pramila and a few others clearly on board.”

And they’re getting support from liberal allies in the Senate.

“A framework is part of getting to a final bill, but I’m not OK with the infrastructure bill being passed out of the House until we actually have a bill in the Senate,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

Burgess Everett and Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner on Wednesday lamented the slow pace of the investigation into the cause and origins of the so-called Havana Syndrome afflicting American diplomats — but he warned that should a rival nation be found culpable, the U.S. response will “pose one of the most challenging policy choices” yet for the Biden administration.

“The fact that we still don’t know for sure who did it and how these attacks were carried out is very, very problematic, to say the least. We are, in a bipartisan way, absolutely on top of this,” Warner (D-Va.) told POLITICO Playbook in a virtual interview.

“I think that the administration, when they reach their conclusion, will lay that out,” he said, adding: “The challenge will be, when they lay it out — particularly if it’s a nation-state that originates this activity — what we do then is going to pose one of the most challenging policy choices for this administration to date.”

More than 200 American personnel, mostly diplomats and CIA officers, have reported symptoms consistent with the illness. POLITICO previously reported that Biden administration officials have told the congressional intelligence committees they believe the victims were hit with a directed-energy weapon wielded by a hostile foreign government, likely Russia — though the investigation is ongoing.

Warner also criticized the Trump administration Wednesday for its handling of the sharp increase in reported cases worldwide in the years following the initial cases reported in Havana, Cuba, in 2016.

“This is an area where the previous administration just whiffed,” he said. “I was very disappointed that, for example, at the CIA and at [the] State Department and at [the Defense Department], that employees — career employees who are victims of these attacks — weren’t treated seriously enough, literally for years.”

The State Department, in particular, has been accused of withholding critical information from Congress and denying proper medical care for the victims.

POLITICO reported earlier this week that the State Department was testing and failing American diplomats for directed energy exposure as early as 2018, more than two years before informing Congress. A current State official also shared documents with POLITICO detailing his claims that the department is retaliating against him for speaking out about the matter — including by revoking his administrative leave.

The Jan. 6 select committee is temporarily backing off a request for about 50 pages of Trump White House records, even though the National Archives concluded the documents were relevant to the panel’s investigation.

Lawmakers and aides say they want to avoid a complicated and possibly protracted negotiation over documents related to the Capitol attack that might be legitimately shielded by executive privilege, attorney-client privilege or other reasons. House investigators intend to seek the documents later but opted to “defer” the request after talks with President Joe Biden’s White House.

“We’re in a hurry,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the Jan. 6 panel’s nine members. “We don’t want to get hung up.”

The decision marks the first acknowledgment that some of former President Donald Trump’s records may end up outside the select committee’s reach, even if they relate to its investigation of the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. It’s unclear whether the committee delayed its pursuit of the records at the White House’s request or based on its own analysis, but Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called the decision “a process of give and take” with the Biden administration.

“We are not acknowledging privilege in any of these cases — especially because President Biden is failing to assert an executive privilege — and we don’t think that trying to overthrow the U.S. government is something that triggers executive privilege,” Raskin said. “It’s hard to see that as part of the official duties of a president.”

Tim Mulvey, the committee’s spokesperson, emphasized that the decision to defer the request was temporary.

“The Select Committee has not withdrawn its request for those records and will continue to engage with the executive branch to ensure we get access to all the information relevant to our probe,” Mulvey said.

A White House official declined to detail the reasons the committee deferred its request — or at whose recommendation — but described it as “a routine part of the accommodation process between Congress and the Executive Branch in these types of matters.”

“This reflects a productive engagement between the Select Committee and the Executive Branch,” the official said.

The select committee asked the National Archives last month to produce voluminous records from Trump’s White House, including communications between his top advisers and central figures involved in his quest to overturn the 2020 election results. National Archivist David Ferriero has so far identified at least three tranches of documents that respond to the committee’s request.

According to the federal law governing presidential records, Ferriero must first produce the records to Trump, who then has 30 days to decide whether to ask Biden to assert executive privilege on his predecessor’s behalf.

Trump has made sweeping claims of privilege over all of his White House records and also identified specific sets of documents that he asked Biden to block from the committee. So far, Biden has rejected the bulk of Trump’s requests, calling the attack on the Capitol unprecedented and worthy of a fulsome investigation.

Biden’s first denial prompted Trump to file a federal lawsuit to block the committee from obtaining his records, which is slated for a hearing before Judge Tanya Chutkan next week.

But even as Biden’s White House has rejected the lion’s share of Trump’s reasoning thus far, it’s made clear that it will consider each tranche of documents produced by the Archives on a case-by-case basis to determine whether any records are subject to legitimate privilege claims. It appears that the request the committee has deferred includes dozens of pages that may fall into that category.

The White House alluded to negotiations with the committee in a letter to Ferriero on Monday.

“In the course of the accommodation process between Congress and the Executive Branch, the select committee has deferred its request for the following responsive records,” White House Counsel Dana Remus wrote, identifying about 50 pages of records without describing the information they contain.

The decision to delay the request for these pages does not seem to be the result of a privilege claim by Trump. In her letter, Remus said that despite the committee’s deferral, Ferriero should provide any of the 50 pages “as to which the former president has not asserted privilege.”

Trump aides did not respond to a request for comment on the development.

The White House has told allies in Congress that climate change programs in Democrats’ spending bill will range between $500 billion and $555 billion, according to four sources familiar with the negotiations.

While the package will exclude Democrats’ proposed system of payments and penalties to push power companies to increase renewable energy, the plan being developed will allow President Joe Biden to head to the global climate talks next week in Glasgow, Scotland with a framework for the largest-ever U.S. investment in fighting climate change.

“We continue to engage with Congress on this incredibly important topic and see the ball move forward. We feel that the conversations have been accelerating in the right direction,” a senior administration official said in a Tuesday call with reporters that did not discuss the topline climate figures.

Passing legislation would help Biden make good on his pledge to cut U.S. planet-warming emissions 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels this decade. While the climate total is less than the $600 billion in Democrats’ original $3.5 trillion plan, it comes at a crucial moment for Biden, who is eager to demonstrate U.S. leadership on climate change.

Democrats have worried that the U.S. delegation would arrive at the United Nations talks with no domestic agreement on how to address climate change, a failure that would damage the nation’s credibility on climate while giving other countries an excuse to do less. That scenario seemed likely after Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) objection to a $150 billion proposal to advance clean power threw the climate package into a tailspin.

“Our goal has always been send the president to Glasgow with a very strong position,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told reporters.

It remains to be seen, however, whether Democrats and the White House can agree on an overall framework for the broader social spending plan. Those talks are ongoing, though climate hawks in Congress believe having that structure in place before Glasgow would be enough for Biden to credibly back up his climate vows.

“You need to be able to convince other countries the U.S. is on track,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told POLITICO. “How much we can provide that assurance will depend on these negotiations in Congress.”

One person familiar with the negotiations said new initiatives to replace the clean power program Manchin opposed include grants, loans and tax credits to speed decarbonization of industrial sectors like steel, cement and aluminum.

Other provisions include manufacturing credits to buoy domestic solar and wind energy supply chains, with those investments targeted toward communities with automobile and energy production histories; expanding grants and loans for rural electric cooperatives to foster more clean energy additions; and increasing agricultural grants and loans to encourage clean energy adoption.

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.

White House officials on Tuesday downplayed the need to lock down a deal on President Joe Biden’s expansive Build Back Better agenda ahead of his overseas trip to meet with other global leaders in Europe.

The president is scheduled to attend a United Nations conference on climate change on Monday and Tuesday of next week, a meeting where Democratic leaders had hoped Biden would be able to showcase the environmental protection provisions of his administration’s signature legislative objective. But key components of that social spending plan, including some provisions to combat climate change, remain under negotiation between Democrats on Capitol Hill, and it is unclear whether lawmakers will strike a deal before Biden departs for Europe on Thursday.

Biden has personally expressed his hope that Congress could vote on his administration’s social spending package this week, but both White House press secretary Jen Psaki and national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday that the president’s negotiating positions at the U.N. climate change conference would not be diminished if he does not have a domestic deal in hand when he arrives.

“I don’t think world leaders will look at this as a binary issue: is it done, is it not done,” Sullivan said. “They’ll say ‘is president Biden on track to deliver what he said he’s going to deliver?’ And we believe one way or the other he will be on track.”

Democrats in recent days have expressed optimism that they are nearing a breakthrough toward an agreement on Biden’s social spending package, originally billed at $3.5 trillion over ten years but has since been whittled down closer to $1.5 trillion due to reservations from key Senate holdouts.

But only days remain until Biden is due to travel to Europe, meaning time is running out to reach a handshake deal, let alone the time-consuming process of passing a bill through the reconciliation process.

“I think what the allies are looking at is the effort that president Biden has undertaken to design and now negotiate an ambitious, effective, practical set of investments in climate, clean energy, infrastructure and economic development in the United States,” Sullivan said. “They want to see the United States making these investments. They also recognize that the United States has a set of democratic institutions, has a Congress, that this is a process that it needs to be worked through.”

Sullivan’s comments were echoed shortly afterward by Psaki.

“These global leaders are sophisticated,” she said. “They’re familiar themselves — although they all have different systems — with how you legislate here in the United States. They watch closely. They know it can take some time.”

Psaki said even if a deal doesn’t materialize by the time Biden is due to meet with his counterparts from other countries that if Democrats are “on the verge” of an agreement then “global leaders take note of that too.”

She also dismissed the need for Biden to remain in Washington in order to seal negotiations.

“There are phones on Air Force One, and also in Europe, and so he will continue to be engaged even as we move to the trip,” she said.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced his plans to tap acting Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel as the agency’s permanent chief, ending months of cliffhanger drama about the choice.

Biden bundled the long-awaited announcement with his decisions to nominate veteran public interest heavyweights Gigi Sohn for the sole open FCC commissioner seat and Alan Davidson to head the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a key telecom policy role in the Commerce Department.

POLITICO reported late Monday that the White House was preparing to announce the trio’s nominations.

Meet the broadband vanguard: These leaders would be at the front lines of the administration’s efforts to expand broadband internet service to every American, a cornerstone of the infrastructure efforts on Capitol Hill.

Under H.R. 3684 (117), the bipartisan infrastructure legislation that cleared the Senate in August, $65 billion would go to this goal, split among federal agencies including the FCC and NTIA. The FCC would be tasked with administering a broadband affordability subsidy to help consumers with their monthly bills and pass new rules to halt the practice known as digital redlining. The agency is also tasked with coming up with more accurate internet coverage maps to guide the billions in grants flowing to NTIA to support the build-out of physical internet infrastructure. NTIA would also be charged with administering grants dedicated to fostering digital equity.

The picks come during a potentially critical moment for the infrastructure bill, which is still awaiting a vote in the House, depending on how negotiations land with Biden’s wider health, climate and social spending plan.

Although Biden waited longer than most presidents to name his FCC and NTIA picks, left-leaning advocacy groups were quick to cheer the choices. “This is a dream team for anyone who cares about the future of the internet and the media,” Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron said.

But first, a test of Senate speed: These are all Senate-confirmed positions, and Democratic leadership will face pressure to move the nominees quickly.

As a sitting commissioner, Rosenworcel is the only one who can assume her new role immediately. But she requires Senate confirmation to a new five-year term at the agency, and without that will have to leave by the end of this year.

All three have long records in Washington that will likely take center stage as part of the Senate confirmation process. Senators will probably press Rosenworcel and Sohn about their plans for regulating broadband and reviving Obama-era net neutrality rules. Davidson, meanwhile, who was most recently a senior adviser at Mozilla, could face questions about his role as Google’s first Washington lobbyist more than a decade ago.

Joe Biden and Democrats know they won’t be able to spin a loss in Virginia. So they’re raising the stakes of the election instead.

Biden is back stumping for Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday as he tries to hold off Glenn Youngkin, the Trump-backed Republican, in a bitterly tight race. With the election coming next week, both the president and the Democratic Party are increasingly embracing the notion that it is in large part a referendum on their handling of the pandemic and their support of massive government spending programs — as well as a broader repudiation of the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

In doing so, and even with Biden’s numbers dropping of late, Democrats are leaning into an approach that past administrations have shunned: freely tying their own fortunes to the outcome of an early, down-ballot race. A win for Youngkin, Biden’s aides and allies say, may not scuttle his domestic agenda. But it would be the first domino to fall, foreshadowing potential problems with the party’s planned midterm quest to paint Republicans as too extreme to govern.

“If they want to make sure that Donald Trump is front and center running for president again, then don’t show up to vote,” warned Chris Korge, national finance chair at the Democratic National Committee, who is close with McAuliffe. “This could be the ballgame here.”

Underscoring their seriousness, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and other officials touted the multimillion investment the party has made in the state, along with repeat visits from Biden, the first lady and the vice president. “We’re all in,” Harrison said before a Richmond rally for McAuliffe over the weekend. “Virginia is very important; we want to make sure that we turn the vote out.”

Biden’s all-in act is a break from his former boss, Barack Obama, whose team worked to distance itself from the Democratic gubernatorial campaign in 2009 and, in 2013, talked up the challenges of winning in Virginia given their control of the White House. Biden’s approach comes with obvious risks, offering Republicans an added measure to gloat about White House backlash should Youngkin prevail. Nevertheless, the president’s team and other party leaders have come to the conclusion that there is no other path.

For one, there are too many parallels between Biden and McAuliffe. Both are establishment figures whose tempered views align on virtually every major issue. They’ve also concluded that to adequately stoke turnout, Democrats need to emphasize the existential stakes of the race, something Obama himself drove home in his speech for McAuliffe this weekend and Biden offered on the campaign trail over the summer.

The White House and its partners are closely coordinating their efforts and have been speaking with the McAuliffe campaign nearly every day, with one Biden adviser telling POLITICO they think McAuliffe has performed well and is hitting on issues they viewed as most important to voters.

“We think Terry is running a strong campaign,” the Biden adviser said, pointing to the contrasts he’s drawn with Youngkin over Covid-19 and mandatory vaccination as well as tying the Republican to former President Donald Trump. “He’s doing all the right things.”

While the adviser initially allowed that tradition holds that the party in the White House typically loses the Virginia governor’s race, the person quickly noted it was McAuliffe in 2013 who became the first candidate in decades to break that trend.

Overall, Youngkin has tried to strike a delicate balance between Trump’s MAGA supporters and the swing voters who fled the Virginia Republican Party in great numbers during Trump’s tenure in the White House. Youngkin has been endorsed by Trump several times and has accepted his support. But the former president has not appeared in person to stump for the candidate.

Youngkin has deflected questions about Trump hitting the stump for him throughout the campaign, and he has eschewed national surrogates in the closing days, mocking McAuliffe for bringing in a long list of big names. But that isn’t the only way he’s trying to thread the needle. One of the top issues Youngkin discussed during the primary was “election integrity,” yet he also said Biden was duly elected. Youngkin has encouraged everyone to get vaccinated, but he’s said mandates instituted by the Biden administration are too much and that he doesn’t believe Biden had the authority to institute them.

Youngkin also bristles at Democrats’ nearly ceaseless attempts to yoke him to Trump. “There’s an over and under tonight on how many times you are going to say ‘Donald Trump,’ and it was 10,” Youngkin shot back at McAuliffe during the second and final debate between the two men in late September. “And you just busted through it. You are running against Glenn Youngkin.”

Biden, in turn, has not been a regular part of Youngkin’s campaign. He has referenced the president occasionally, particularly when talking about the Justice Department’s October memo warning about the rising threats to school board members. That memo has generated significant backlash from Youngkin and conservatives nationwide who portray it as the federal government not helping to protect endangered officials but limiting the ability of parents to petition them.

Youngkin also dismissed Biden’s appearance in the state in a recent interview with Fox News. “If President Biden wants to come campaign in Virginia, come on, spend all the time you want here,” he said, in remarks that echoed past GOP hopefuls. “You can’t help but look at President Biden and recognize what a failed presidency looks like.”

But Biden is not omnipresent in Republicans’ advertising like he and other national Democrats will likely be in major 2022 races. No recent Youngkin TV ad mentions Biden by name, according to a search of transcripts from the ad tracking firm AdImpact, and the latest Youngkin ad mentioning the president on Facebook was in May.

For those reasons, it is possible that a McAuliffe loss won’t fully rebound on the White House and the Democratic agenda, even as they play up the stakes of the race. Local education issues have at times run hot in Virginia, as much as, if not more than, anything on the presidential level.

Biden’s own decision to up the stakes of the race comes as Virginia occupies a much different place in the minds of Democrats than it had under Obama. The state is bluer, which has convinced advisers and party leaders even more that a loss would be difficult to dismiss as an isolated political moment, even if the Democratic freakout over it will undoubtedly prove over-torqued. Last year, Biden won the state handily, and Republicans haven’t won a statewide race there in more than a decade.

In the closing weeks of that 2009 contest, Obama’s advisers bitterly complained about the Democrat, R. Creigh Deeds, contending he ran a bad race and didn’t hug the president closely enough. Obama officials insisted they had reason to absolve themselves of responsibility for the loss, which polls had shown was likely before it happened. Obama senior administration officials told reporters that Deeds failed to coordinate with the White House, particularly around its strategy to help boost turnout among Black and younger voters. Obama also was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win the commonwealth’s electoral votes, a victory he had hoped would transform the political map for years to come.

Four years later, when Obama and Democrats threw everything they had at Republican Ken Cuccinelli, they remained far more bullish about McAuliffe’s chances of winning. Still, Obama advisers had tried to calibrate expectations by noting the headwinds he faced, as news reports at the time focused on the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act. McAuliffe squeaked by, giving Obama’s team the chance to publicly relish his support for Obamacare and criticize Cuccinelli’s fierce opposition to the law.

Biden’s short trip Tuesday night to Arlington comes amid flagging poll numbers for the president in the state and nationwide. In a recent Monmouth University poll, Biden’s job approval rating was well underwater: 43 percent approved of the job he was doing, and 52 percent disapproved. But his numbers are still high among Democrats — 84 percent approved, and 9 percent disapproved — and positive in Northern Virginia, where he has a plus-10 favorability.

That’s where Democrats want him in the closing days, said Josh Schwerin, a Democratic strategist who has worked as a McAuliffe political adviser and former press secretary.

“Youngkin is trying to tell everyone he doesn’t have any surrogates,” Schwerin said. “I am really glad that Biden is trying to raise the stakes because we need voters to wake up. It turns up the noise.”