Democrats in key battlegrounds throw Joe Biden under the bus on the border

WASHINGTON — Democratic candidates in 2026 battleground races are directly criticizing Joe Biden’s handling of border security when he was president, seeking to neutralize a political vulnerability and signaling a new path for the party on the thorny issue. Candidates are throwing the ex-president under the bus on border policy in key states that will decide control of the Senate and some battleground House races across the country. “I called out Joe Biden for failing us on the border,” Texas’ Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico says in a recent ad airing in the closing stretch of his neck-and-neck race against Republican Ken Paxton. He also criticized Biden in July for having “failed us on our southern border” as he rolled out his own border security plan.

He’s not alone. In Kansas, a longtime Republican stronghold, Democrat Adam Hamilton criticized Biden in a recent debate with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. “I want to be crystal clear, first of all: Immigration at the border under Biden was a disaster. That is how we ended up where we are today,” he said. “Second, what we did in response to that has been a disaster for people across the state of Kansas.” Hamilton, like other Democrats in areas that voted for Trump in 2024, paired their critique of Biden with criticism that the current