ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Biden is isolating at home with COVID while questions about his candidacy are getting louder. Top Democrats are releasing vague statements that fall well short of offering support, while others call for him to pass the torch. Biden's deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said today that Biden isn't going anywhere.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
QUENTIN FULKS: Joe Biden has said he is running for president of the United States. Our campaign is moving forward.
SHAPIRO: That includes in Wisconsin, where Democratic volunteers are still knocking on doors for Joe Biden in the face of all this uncertainty. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Eighty-one-year-old Paul Geenen is wearing blue suede Adidas sneakers and has a perfectly sized satchel packed with campaign literature.
PAUL GEENEN: My kids tell me and my grandkids say, Grandpa, you look good.
KEITH: And while headlines screamed alarm about the fate of President Biden's campaign, Geenen was knocking on doors.
GEENEN: Hi.
THERESA: Hi.
GEENEN: Are you, Theresa?
THERESA: I am.
GEENEN: Hi. I'm Paul with the Shorewood Dems.
KEITH: Shorewood is a heavily Democratic village just north of Milwaukee. But the list Geenen is working from contains a mix of possibly persuadable Republicans, independents and Democrats.
GEENEN: Are you going to support Joe Biden in November?
THERESA: I'm not sure.
GEENEN: Not sure. OK.
KEITH: Undeterred, Geenen plows ahead with his pitch.
GEENEN: I am supporting President Biden because my family has been impacted by gun violence four times.
THERESA: I'm sorry to hear that.
GEENEN: And he's done a lot for that, and he's going to do more.
KEITH: He enters her response into a campaign app and moves on to the next door...
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
KEITH: ...And the next one.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR CREAKING)
KEITH: Most people aren't home or don't come to the door, so he leaves campaign fliers and keeps on moving. At one house, he chats with a woman who says the economy is her top issue, and she's definitely not voting for Biden. There's a house where the residents are supporting Biden and another one where a young man without a shirt on comes to the door. He, too, says the economy is his top issue.
GEENEN: So are you going to support Joe Biden this fall? What are your thoughts?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I really don't think I am. I'm not - I haven't really decided, but...
GEENEN: OK, so you're...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I think I might go independent.
KEITH: Walking away, Geenen says he'll be back. This voter might be persuadable. Geenen says a lot of people he knows are stressed about Biden, his bad debate performance and the reckoning since.
GEENEN: My wife is really, really bummed out.
KEITH: Geenen is just putting his head down and doing the work, but, with a choice curse word, makes it clear he's done talking about the drama. He pulls up his metrics from his recent shifts of door- knocking.
GEENEN: I talked to four people. I knocked on 42 doors.
KEITH: And one of them signed up to volunteer. Geenen says this helps him keep going - that, and a drive to make the country a better place for his kids and grandkids.
GEENEN: Why I keep going out, win or lose and trying to move the rock up the hill.
KEITH: The Biden campaign has built a massive operation on the ground in Wisconsin, with thousands of volunteers, more than a hundred staff and 48 offices around the state, even in Republican strongholds. This is bigger, earlier than ever, all coordinated with the state party.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Ben Wikler, our state party chair.
(APPLAUSE)
KEITH: Ben Wikler was in a backyard, rallying about a dozen volunteers last Saturday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEN WIKLER: And the thing that all of us can control - the thing that is within our power - is to show up and do the work. And I want to say, you know, I know that watching the debate was really tough. It was a really tough debate in the presidential election, and all these questions arose afterwards of what to do.
KEITH: What he said they could do is just keep working to get Democrats elected up and down the ballot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WIKLER: And it's the people doing the work right now, who bring their focus to having the conversations with the voters that will tip this election one way or the other, who are the heroes of this moment.
KEITH: Afterward, volunteer Joe Walsh from Bayview told me it has been a challenging few weeks.
JOE WALSH: Well, most people that I've seen when I knock on doors are unsure. You know, they realize things are just up in the air.
KEITH: So what does he tell them?
WALSH: I'm just saying that I'm all-in for Biden until something radical changes, you know? And I think that's the only approach we can do with them.
KEITH: And he just keeps showing up.
Tamara Keith, NPR News, Milwaukee. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
