Obama, Pelosi to rally for Biden’s reelection

President Joe Biden is enlisting his predecessor Barack Obama, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bolster his case to voters that he’s made health care more affordable — and deserves another term in the White House.

Biden, Obama and Pelosi will rally virtually with activists on Saturday to mark the 14th anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act, part of a broader push to make what Biden’s advisers see as one of the strongest arguments for his reelection. The anniversary events will also include a blitz of digital ads and events in the swing states Biden needs to win in November: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Biden has long signaled that he plans to run on his health care record and go after his presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, for suggesting Republicans take another run at repealing Obamacare. But the plans, first shared with POLITICO, show the strategy kicking into a higher gear with the first public joint appearance with Obama since Biden’s reelection campaign launched last year.

“The Affordable Care Act is so significant for both of them,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, told POLITICO. “It really shows what it means to have leaders fighting for you and doing things people thought were impossible.”

Amid a wave of GOP attacks on immigration, inflation, crime and other issues, Democrats up and down the ballot are keen to campaign on their health care records as polling shows voters trust the party far more than Republicans on the issue.

Biden plans to highlight policies that are “tangible” and that impact “what people are going through in their lives every day,” O’Malley Dillon said — from the beefed-up ACA subsidies enacted during his first year in office to the record-high Obamacare enrollment the country reached in January. Biden also plans to stress the recently launched price negotiations for expensive drugs under Medicare on the campaign trail, even though most voters won’t see lower costs until at least 2026. And the campaign began airing ads this week in English and Spanish touting the law Biden signed ordering the negotiations and capping out-of-pocket insulin costs for Medicare patients.

But the campaign sees Obamacare — which cost Democrats control of Congress in its nascent years but enjoys broad popularity today — as among its most potent weapons. Enrollment in the ACA is 50 percent higher today than it was when Republicans last tried to repeal it in 2017, with some of the biggest gains in Florida and other red states. Nine more red and purple states have also expanded Medicaid under the law since then, which GOP lawmakers acknowledge makes repeal even more politically dicey.