Biden’s growing tally of campaign offices marks a rare bright spot for the president
CNN
Biden’s growing tally of campaign offices marks a rare bright spot in his rematch with Trump as his team looks to build entirely different operation from 2020.
Inside President Joe Biden’s reelection headquarters here, a sign boasts of some of the campaign’s most significant metrics: Pennsylvania, 24; Michigan, 30; Wisconsin 44. These are not poll numbers, but rather the latest – and growing – tally of campaign offices already open in three battleground states. It’s a rare bright spot in Biden’s rematch with former President Donald Trump and the most tangible example of how the campaign is using its fundraising muscle to build an entirely different operation from four years ago. “Our job at this point is to build infrastructure in all of our pathways to victory,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director. “Razor-thin margins in lots of these states, and I want to press the advantage against Donald Trump. They have not built field infrastructure. They have not had a presence in these states.” Four years after the pandemic upended the 2020 presidential election, Kanninen and a growing team of advisers are looking to send an unmistakable message with the latest effort: This is no Biden basement campaign. A sprawling organization, with a mix of brick-and-mortar offices and fresh technology to connect people, stands in contrast to Biden’s Zoom calls and drive-in rallies of the 2020 race. “We’re not sitting in court,” Kanninen said, nodding to Trump’s hush money trial in New York that has largely kept him off the campaign trail in recent weeks. “Infrastructure, in terms of the staff and what we are building, and the cash advantage is something that we want to push everywhere.”
President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan convened for the first time this week an in-person meeting of ambassadors and chief of missions representing countries whose citizens were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, CNN has learned, as a ceasefire and hostages release deal remains stalled.