November 29, 2023 12:58 PM UTC

Biden Belatedly Barnstorms Boebert's Backyard

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post’s Nick Coltrain reports, President Joe Biden’s long-awaited trip to Colorado–more specifically to America’s Most Vulnerable™ GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district to celebrate renewable energy investments Boebert has steadfastly voted against and then taken credit for–finally kicked off yesterday after his original plan to visit in mid-October was pre-empted by war in the Middle East. But it’s a visit with no less political importance as Democrats plot to recapture the U.S. House in 2024, a plan that includes picking off a weakened and costly-to-defend Boebert:

Biden will visit the CS Wind factory in Pueblo during the early afternoon to promote his signature legislation’s boon to domestic manufacturing. The Pueblo facility is the largest wind turbine tower manufacturer in the world. The legislation included tax incentives for clean energy development and helped spur the South Korean company to invest $200 million to expand the Pueblo factory’s capacity…

Biden also is expected to highlight more than $1 billion in additional private-sector investments made across the state because of the federal legislation, including for a solar farm in La Plata County and pharmaceutical production in Frederick.

Pueblo’s member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, voted against the bills authorizing the spending — a fact the president is also expected to highlight.

Ernest Luning of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog reports on a fundraiser in Denver last night in which Biden slammed Donald Trump and the GOP for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and called out Boebert for voting against infrastructure spending bringing jobs to Boebert’s district:

“Donald Trump’s about to find out the power of women in America in 2024,” Biden told donors, according to a pool report, adding that since the former president came off the sidelines, “We haven’t stopped winning and he hasn’t stopped losing.”

“The only reason a fundamental right has been stripped away from the American people is Donald Trump,” Biden said.

Biden also got in a dig at U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a vocal critic of his administration, calling it “pretty unbelievable” that the Silt Republican called the Democrats’ signature infrastructure package “garbage.”

It was likely a preview of Biden’s remarks on Wednesday, when he is scheduled to conclude the Colorado trip with an appearance in Boebert’s congressional district at Pueblo’s CS Wind factory, the largest wind turbine tower manufacturing plant in the world.

Boebert’s game of claiming credit for spending in her district she voted against has been debunked to the point that no one paying attention to the issue awards her any. But that’s not the whole story: the combination of renewable energy investment and standing up for reproductive rights is a message precision-targeted to sometimes fickle Pueblo Democrats, who are fresh off a battle in the Pueblo City Council over abortion rights that ended in failure for the traveling anti-abortion activist behind the initiative. That experience, a microcosm of the national conflict over abortion rights since the repeal of Roe, is set to inform and energize turnout in Pueblo next November.

For Boebert, who in March interrupted a hearing of her own legislation on gray wolves to show off dead fetus pics, Biden’s visit highlights all of these weaknesses.