Democrats are deploying Jill Biden to act as a closer for the 2022 midterm elections. In tight elections and in swing states, the first lady is doing campaign events that appeal to women and black voters, two groups that show up to hear her. Democrat candidates are running away from Joe Biden but Jill Biden is being embraced.

There have been plenty of fawning articles written about Jill. Most center around her active schedule and how she continues to work as a professor at a community college in Virginia. What isn’t usually noted is how much more of a politically active first lady she is compared to others. First ladies have most often been used to humanize their husbands and to explain their policies to audiences but no one elects first ladies and they are left to make the job what they want to make it. For example, Melania Trump was very popular among supporters but she didn’t choose to hit the campaign trail for her husband during the 2018 midterms or the 2020 campaign. She preferred to keep her own schedule for her initiatives and projects. Jill Biden is more along the lines of Hillary Clinton who considered herself the co-president in her husband’s administration. Her former press secretary says Jill doesn’t offend people.

“She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarizing and political,” said Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist and her former press secretary. “It’s why she was sent all over rural Iowa and New Hampshire during the campaign and why she can go places now that the president can’t.”

I know we’re supposed to think she’s the best first lady ever but I seem to remember a big kerfuffle that was created when she referred to Hispanics as breakfast tacos in San Antonio not so long ago. That was pretty offensive. It wasn’t an ad lib that fell flat, either, the remark was written in her speech.

The first lady has long been thought of in Biden world as a “closer”: a surrogate they rely on to travel to corners of the country that her husband cannot easily reach, ideologically or geographically. White House officials believe she appeals to suburban women and can communicate to Americans “beyond the Twitterverse and cable news chatter,” according to Elizabeth Alexander, her communications director.

Compared with her husband, Dr. Biden is the more disciplined communicator. Her missteps, which are rare, have occurred not off the cuff but during the speeches she works to commit to memory. Over the summer, she was criticized when she compared the diversity of the Hispanic community to the breadth of breakfast taco options available in Texas.

Jill Biden’s polling shows Americans have mixed feelings about her. She had only a 34% favorable rating in a CNN survey last summer and a 29% unfavorable rating. 28% had no opinion of her and 9% said they had never heard of her. It would be easy to snark about those who haven’t heard of her but if you’ve ever seen one of those man-in-the-street interviews where random people are asked questions about the American government or politicians, you know there are a lot of people who aren’t exactly well-versed on current events.

She’s successful in fundraising and that’s important. During an event for Valerie Demings in Orlando, she relied on the issue of abortion to get support from the audience. Jill’s been telling a story about how she once helped a friend recover from an abortion in the late 1960s before Roe v Wade. Funny how that story never surfaced until now, right? Maybe it’s Jill’s version of Joe’s Corn Pop story. Demings is running against Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

One Princeton professor noticed that Jill has become “completely intertwined” with the West Wing.

Lauren A. Wright, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively about political appearances by first ladies, said the East Wing under Dr. Biden, 71, who kept teaching as an English professor as first lady, has become completely intertwined with the political efforts of the West Wing.

“This role has become so serious and political,” she said. “It must be part of the strategic White House planning and effort. Otherwise you’re wasting opportunities.”

Last week Jill was in Georgia to campaign for Senator Warnock and Stacey Abrams. She was there to incite anger among the voters in order to get them riled up enough to go vote.

As first lady, Dr. Biden has traveled to 40 states, and lately, she has tucked a plethora of political visits into trips that spotlight her policy interests. On Thursday, she taught a full day of classes at Northern Virginia Community College before flying to Fort Benning in Georgia, where she visited with military families.

Her political appearances began on Friday evening, when she stood in the foyer of a home with Ms. Abrams and asked some 75 attendees, mostly women, to step closer to her. Then she took aim at Mr. Kemp and the policies that he supports, including a law he signed that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and another that limits voting access.

“I know that makes you angry,” she told them. “And it should make you angry.”

In Florida she slammed Governor DeSantis.

She delivered an interview focused on breast cancer awareness with the host of a show on Newsmax, then she flew to Orlando, where she appeared with Mr. Crist and Ms. Demings in front of City Hall, clasping hands and holding their arms up in a victory gesture.

Dr. Biden, who recently spent time in Florida with Mr. Biden and Mr. DeSantis to tour storm damage from Hurricane Ian, offered her pointed assessment of the state government: “This state deserves a governor who will get to work for all of Florida’s families.” After the event, Dr. Biden, surrounded on all sides by Secret Service agents, walked down from the steps of City Hall and toward a group of people who wanted to shake her hand.

It’s interesting to read that she did an interview with Newsmax. Her criticism of both Kemp and DeSantis shows that the White House is worried about those two Republican governors. Both have very effectively governed their states and both will win re-election. DeSantis may challenge Sleepy Joe in 2024.

Jill Biden may be considered the closer by the Biden administration but she won’t save the midterm elections next month for Democrats. Early voting in Georgia begins today. Mark Penn, a Clinton pollster, admits that the red wave that faded into a ripple in August after the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs has built back up and is very likely to be a reality in November. Most voters are angry about a whole lot of things in their everyday lives, largely thanks to Joe Biden’s bad policies and governance. Abortion isn’t the top hot button issue Democrats hope it will be.