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Former President Joe Biden has been largely absent from the campaign trail as Democrats fight to win back House and Senate majorities in November, even as former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris step up efforts to boost the party’s candidates.
Biden, 83, has kept a limited public schedule while battling advanced, metastatic prostate cancer. He has endorsed candidates and is helping Democrats raise money, according to a source in Biden’s political circle. But the former president has made few political appearances this year.
The contrast is increasingly visible with four weeks to go until Election Day.
Obama is cutting ads for Senate and gubernatorial candidates, helping the party fundraise and preparing to hit the trail during the closing stretch of the midterm campaign. Harris, the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee, is also campaigning across key battleground states, including a recent stop in Michigan with Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
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Former President Barack Obama during a campaign event on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Biden has appeared at just a handful of political events this year. He spoke in February at a reception honoring his 2020 South Carolina primary victory, which propelled him toward the Democratic nomination and eventually the presidency. In June, he addressed a Maryland Democratic Party event.
Longtime Democratic strategist Michael Ceraso told Digital that some in the party’s elite and fundraising class are concerned that “if Biden were to be pushed out there in any sort of way for virtual or in-person opportunities, he could be a liability.”
Veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona had a different take, telling Digital, “There are still a ton of Americans who love Joe Biden.”
Biden did weigh in on a handful of Democratic primary showdowns this cycle. The former president endorsed former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor. Bottoms, who served as a senior advisor in the Biden administration, won the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
The former president also backed Dan Koh, another Biden administration veteran, who captured the Democratic nomination in Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District.
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Former President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd during a fundraising event with the South Carolina Democratic Party at the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina, on Feb. 27, 2026. The event marked the sixth anniversary of Biden’s presidential primary win in South Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
Biden is also advocating on behalf of efforts to secure democracy.
“American democracy begins and ends at the ballot box. There is no more important civic duty nor fundamental right to be defended,” the former president wrote on social media last month, as he cast his ballot in his home state of Delaware’s primary. “Voting defines our freedom and makes everything possible.”
But mostly, Biden has served as a foil for President Donald Trump, who Biden ousted from the White House in the 2020 election. Four years later, Biden ended his re-election bid after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in their 2024 rematch.
Trump and fellow Republicans are repeatedly blaming Biden for high prices at the gas and diesel pumps, even though public opinion polls indicate most Americans now point fingers at Trump and his administration.
Biden left the presidency with poor approval ratings, as he faced high inflation, foreign policy divides, and lingering questions about his ability to serve in office. He stood at 42% approval and 57% disapproval in January 2025, in the final poll during his White House tenure.
Post-presidency, Biden held a 71% favorable rating among Democrats in a CNN poll conducted in May. But Biden’s favorable rating among Democrats was 25 points lower than Obama’s.
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Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden depart after speaking on the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 15, 2025. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, some Democrats still blame him for Trump’s 2024 re-election, arguing that Biden did not get out of the race in time to allow Harris to mount a successful campaign.
Ceraso, a veteran of two presidential campaigns, pointed to the 2024 election and told Digital that Biden left a “bad taste with some Democrats, especially within the party’s elite and fundraising class.”
He added, “I do not think Biden has the same level of charisma as Vice President Harris and former President Obama, and if I’m organizing an event to get thousands of people to come out, I would not do that around Biden.”
Cardona, a Democratic National Committee member, said Biden’s health is stifling requests for campaign trail appearances.
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“I guarantee you no one would try to bother him to come campaign for them while, at 83 years old, he is battling cancer and in the toughest fight of his life,” Cardona emphasized.
Digital reached out to a Biden spokesman for comment, but did not receive a response at the time this story was published.
