President Joe Biden arrives to speak at Onondaga Community College on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022, in Syracuse, N.Y.
President Biden voted early in the November midterms at a polling center in Delaware on Saturday alongside his granddaughter Natalie Biden, the 18-year-old daughter of Beau Biden.
The two members of the Biden family voted one after another at the same polling station, where the president announced that it was his granddaughter’s first time voting to the applause of the election workers.
The president and Natalie Biden placed “I voted” stickers on one another after casting their votes and the elder Biden kissed his granddaughter on the cheek.
After voting, the president said that he is “feeling good” about midterms after traveling to various states to campaign.
“This is not a referendum,” Biden said of the election. “It’s a fundamental choice between two different people.”
His comments echoed those he made earlier this week at a Democratic National Committee event calling the midterm elections “a choice between two vastly different visions for America.”
In the same speech, Biden referred to some Republican policy choices as “mega-MAGA trickle-down politics in the extreme.”
On Saturday, the president reiterated his support for Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman (D), for whom he has campaigned, at the polling station.
“Fetterman is my kind of guy,” Biden said. “He’s just getting better and better.”
Biden returned to a discussion of extremism when asked about the recent assault on Paul Pelosi, the businessman married to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“We don’t know for certain but it looks like this was intended for Nancy,” Biden said of the incident, in which a man allegedly asked for the Speaker before assaulting her husband at their San Francisco home.
The president continued: “It’s one thing to condemn the violence. But you can’t condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who are arguing that the election is not real.”
“The talk has to stop. That’s the problem. That’s the problem … condemn what produces the violence,” he said.
