Joe Biden And Hilda Solis Cheer Ohio Workers, Admonish Kasich

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has tread lightly with regards to getting involved in the collective bargaining battles being waged largely on the state level. When Ohio was considering the repeal of Gov. John Kasich's SB 5, which curbed collective bargaining rights for all public workers, the administration declined to weigh in, only to later affirm that the president opposed the legislation.

Obama's reelection team is taking a different approach. In a stop in Euclid, Ohio, Vice President Joseph Biden gave his full-throated endorsement to the unions who had helped repeal SB 5.

"Folks, you fired the first shot,” he said, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It’s not about Barack Obama. It’s not about Joe Biden. It’s about whether middle-class people are going to be put back in the saddle again – because you are the people who make this country move.”

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, meanwhile, gave Kasich a little ribbing.

“How dare he?” she asked, in reference to the governor's decision to target the collective bargaining rights of police officers and firefighters in addition to other public workers -- a reach that other Republican governors chose not to make.

Ohio, of course, plays a special role in the Obama campaign's political calculus. That Biden and Solis were sent there to campaign so soon after SB 5's repeal, and that they jumped at the chance to involve the unpopular Kasich in their pitch to voters, says something about how the campaign views its chances in the state.

Top aides to the campaign have long argued that the president's chances in the all-important swing state aren't necessarily as bad as his poll numbers would suggest, due to the national and statewide backlash against Republican policy and the even lower approval ratings of the governor.