Biden ally warns Democrats against relying on threat to democracy message

Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland and campaign surrogate for Joe Biden, has warned of the limitations of an election message centred on the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump.

In January the US president gave a rousing speech about the need to protect democratic institutions from Trump, now his rival in the 2024 election, and the Biden campaign has promised to put the issue front and centre.

But Moore, who is Maryland’s first Black chief executive and only the third Black governor ever elected in the nation, said that voters are focused on cost-of-living, housing and healthcare issues.

“When you’re talking to a lot of folks – and I can tell you specifically when you’re talking to folks in communities I grew up in and my old neighbours – the threat to democracy is not something that’s on people’s everyday thought list or the things that they’re prioritising,” the governor told reporters in Washington on Thursday.

“They’re prioritising things like how expensive prescription drugs are. They’re prioritising things like we have a housing crisis that we have to address. They’re prioritising things like you graduated from college – or maybe you did not graduate from college, you just took college courses 23 years ago – and you’re still paying off debt.

“That’s the thing that they’re talking about and so I think that’s the message that we need to continue to resonate, because on those issues and so many more the president actually has a story to tell.”

Biden can point to an increase in housing inventory and measures that make it easier to build affordable housing, Moore argues, as well as a cap on insulin prices and steps to reinforce and expand the Affordable Care Act, which Trump has threatened to undermine.

The danger to