Biden confronts crucial day in his campaign, as his team says no Democrat would do better

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden campaign is laying out what it sees as its path to keeping the White House in a new memo sent to its staffers Thursday, saying that winning the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan is the “clearest pathway” to victory.

Though senior aides write in the memo that they could clinch 270 electoral votes in a number of ways, the new memo, obtained by The Associated Press, says those three states are critical and why President Joe Biden has prioritized the areas in his recent travels. He went to Madison, Wisconsin; Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania over the weekend, and will head to Detroit on Friday.

The fresh emphasis on the “blue wall” states by the campaign, which has heavily invested in other battlegrounds such as Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, acknowledges that the path to defeating Donald Trump in November is narrowing, even as the team insists the Sun Belt states are “not out of reach.”

It acknowledges “real” movement in the race, but argues that it was not a “sea change.”

The memo, from campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, also contends that Biden remains the strongest Democratic opponent to Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

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