On Slate’s podcast The Gist, host Mike Pesca noticed he had not been talking about Joe Biden very much, so he checked and found that he had not mentioned his name since June 30 (this episode was recorded and released July 14). He wasn’t sure if this was a distinct oversight on his part, so he had his staff check CNN over that same first two weeks of July.
Anderson Cooper went three days straight after the Fourth of July holiday without mentioning Biden once. Maybe even more amazingly, Jake Tapper, whose show is specifically oriented around presidential politics, only mentioned Biden once in a six show span! That’s more than a week, since he does five shows per week.
Obviously the media thinks Joe Biden is really boring, and in some years that would be deadly for a presidential candidate. But I think a lot of people are craving boring right now.
I don’t know if this is a deliberate strategy or not. But given that Biden has never been a strong campaigner, he’s probably wise to do calm, low-profile campaigning and let people like the Lincoln Project take the big potshots at Trump and the Republicans while Trump and the Republicans continue to mishandle the pandemic and the civil unrest. That way he doesn’t have to worry about the latest verbal gaffe becoming the story, and he looks more presidential.
The Biden campaign is definitely taking a wait-and-see approach until after the Democratic convention. And I expect, given the pandemic, that Biden will probably conduct a largely front-porch campaign. (A lot easier these days what with the interwebs.)
But I don’t think he’s been slacking off, just quietly strategizing. They also just announced that they are expanding their ad buys to include Arizona and Texas.
It’s the, “Never interrupt your enemy while he’s busy committing political suicide”, campaign strategy.
The less the media says about Biden, the less opportunities for Trump to talk about Biden.
Everybody knows that Trump says more stupid shit before breakfast than most people can digest in an entire day. Nobody needs to hear why Trump is wrong about “X”, or what Biden thinks about it. Explaining the right thing always takes longer, is much harder and is full of pitfalls. Best for Biden to keep his gaff-prone mouth shut and let Trump continue to confirm everything everybody already knows – that Trump isn’t fit to shovel shit from one place to another.
QuickSilver said it: it’s a referendum election on Trump’s first time, and people are beginning to realize he’s failing. Why distract them from that realization?
There are only so many hours in the day, so people can only read so many news articles, so the media tends to focus on whatever they think will get eyeballs. There’s lots of focus on coronavirus (which is bad for Trump).
There’s little talk of Roger Stone (which would be bad for Trump), so Trump should be thanking is normally very lucky stars that once again, the media is giving him a free pass on an issue. Would he rather the media talk about this, or Russian bounties?
Biden isn’t doing much publicly right now. He isn’t doing live rallies, and fundraising doesn’t draw much attention. Every once in a while he will toss a swipe at Trump, or we’ll find out he’s buying ads in Texas, but it’s difficult to do a normal election campaign in a pandemic. Furthermore I think he’s terrified about the protests, as he still suffers from foot-in-the-mouth disease.
Meanwhile Trump can’t help but make the news in a negative way. A recent rally was canceled due to the threat of a tropical storm. Er, that is “humidity”. Er, that is they were afraid of low turnout again. He got into the news for wearing a mask, which is just ludicrous. He’s being ripped for (charitably) not noticing that Russia was paying bounties on American troops (either he didn’t read the report, or he ignored the briefer), which makes him seem unpatriotic, incompetent, or both.
Canada as a country has never faced this kind of issue, but the City of Toronto did. We had Rob Ford (the crack smoking mayor). Prior to his election, we were warned repeatedly about his personal flaws, but he had screw-the-elites populist charisma, so he was elected. Four years later he was on the road to defeat when he died of cancer (he had to step down during the election campaign) and his brother Doug ran for mayor, effectively taking over his support. Rob Ford was replaced by John Tory, a variety of human Ambien, because people were tired of “living in interesting times”.
I mean, Biden is giving speeches and stuff. I don’t think he’s purposely trying not to be mentioned on cable news for days at a time. But he does these virtual events and the media just seems to collectively yawn and so these news producers pass on covering any of it. I’m a little shocked that they can’t find a couple minutes in the hour to give it at least a cursory treatment. It’s actually not very sound journalistic practice IMO.
Large article in today’s Chicago Trib touting Biden’s environmental proposals.
What I especially appreciated from the article was Biden’s professed desire, not to return to some past “normal”, but instead, to move forward to a better future. That is a sentiment I have not heard expressed enough these past few months.
Besides, Trump loooooves being the center of attention. Since it serves both Trump and Biden’s goals, why not let Trump continue his monologue center-stage with a spotlight on him?
I still hold out the hope (fantasy really) that the signature event of Biden’s campaign will be a well deserved and long overdue punching of Trump’s slack-lipped sphincter mouth during a debate. I hope Trump is wearing a white mask because you just know he’s a bleeder.
You’re presumably joking, but just in case you’re not: that would be incredibly satisfying in the moment, but would be super risky politically.
Speaking of the debates, you see people like Tom Friedman saying that Biden should be reluctant to debate Trump and insist on conditions and so on. This is a terrible idea. He should be enthusiastic about debating Trump, especially after the extremely low bar the Trump side has foolishly set for Biden in terms of his cognitive and linguistic ability.
I’m not joking. I think it would not only be emotionally satisfying, it would be a cathartic for the majority of the country. People who would not consider voting for Biden now, would come out to vote for him in record numbers. Not a few MAGATS would do the same.
It’s possible that could be the reaction, but it’s also possible it would hurt Biden. He doesn’t need to throw that kind of variance into the race when he’s got a comfortable lead. Time to run the ball and play preevent defense. Definitely not the time to blitz and run trick plays.
Uh… how did that prevent defense thing work in 2016? Comfortable lead and all. Just had to run out the clock, right?
Don’t revel in the past nostalgia, Joe. And certainly don’t think you will win just because it is your time and the polls have you up big. Press on. Campaign, even if it must be in an unconventional manner given the current climate.
I would rather hope that Biden eagerly debates Trump and has a well thought out set of policy proposals to present. Frankly, I wish Trump had a well thought out set of proposals too. But, as the Rolling Stones once sang, you can’t always get what you want.
