By Michael Shepherd - July 31, 2023
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The president made revealing remarks about how he views Maine. President Joe Biden spent only about five hours in the state on Friday between his landing at the Brunswick airport, an Auburn speech focused on manufacturing and a high-dollar barn fundraiser in a tony part of Freeport.

He still gave revealing look at how he looks at Maine: as somewhat of an antidote to national polarization. That is something that is historically true but seems to be less true now. It is also something that threatens Biden's presidency given his low approval ratings entering the 2024 campaign.

None of his remarks were more revealing on this front than those he made at the outdoor fundraiser at the home of Joe and Carol Wishcamper, where the Democrat said he had always viewed the state as "a virtuous place."

After his speech, he said he talked briefly with a state representative. He noted Maine had just passed paid family and medical leave, and she said she was a Republican who voted against. But they still had a civil conversation, and he called many Maine's elected officials "decent, honorable people."

"So, I think of Maine like I used to think of my state, where everybody knows everybody," he said, according to a White House transcript of an event witnessed by a national pool reporter. "And, you know, there's an old joke: You know, be careful what you say, they may be related."

The intimacy of New England politics is an old trope, and it has long been most present in the national consciousness around the New Hampshire presidential primaries. The comments are a reminder that he was elected to the Senate in 1972, a bygone era in which Maine Sen. Edmund S. Muskie was one of the nation's most powerful Democrats after helping flip a Republican state.

Of all Mainers, Biden probably has the greatest ties with Muskie. He has called him a mentor on environmental issues, and the senator urged Biden to take his Senate seat after his first wife and child were killed in a post-election car crash. That plea "mattered" and Muskie went out of his way to spend time with Biden, the president told the fundraiser crowd.

More than 50 years later, Biden is an embattled president with approval ratings sitting in the low 40s. Crossover support is still an important element of Maine politics, as we have seen in recent congressional races, but the north-south divide in our politics is more pronounced than ever right now.

That was evidenced by Biden's 2020 victory in Maine. While he won the state by 9 percentage points overall, it came behind huge support in the 1st Congressional District and despite a 7-point loss in the 2nd District, which was won for the second consecutive time by former President Donald Trump.

Despite his unprecedented criminal charges and potentially more on the way, Trump is lapping his rivals in a crowded Republican primary for the right to take on Biden, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll released Monday.

Biden sees himself as an antidote to polarization. His opponents think he is a participant in it. Either way, he must deal with it in Maine and beyond.