Coronavirus: Joe Biden’s virtual campaign against Donald Trump struggling
Joe Biden is under growing pressure to leave home isolation and hit the hustings as he struggles to capture America’s attention.
Joe Biden is under growing pressure to leave home isolation at some point soon and hit the hustings as his virtual campaign struggles to capture the attention of Americans.
Democrats are increasingly worried that the former Vice President’s public profile is being diminished and his political message drowned out by trying to campaign without leaving his house.
The 78-year-old presumptive Democratic nominee has so far been forced to conduct his campaign via video from his home in Wilmington Delaware because of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden has appeared on video messages, virtual town halls, talk shows and a podcast but it has not been enough to capture broad public attention during the coronavirus pandemic.
The 126 videos that Biden’s campaign have put on YouTube this year have averaged only 28,000 views. By comparison, Barack Obama’s recent video endorsing his former Vice President had 1.9 million views.
As key Obama Democrat strategists David Plouffe and David Axelrod wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, Biden’s home studios resemble “an astronaut beaming back to earth from the International Space Station”.
By contrast Biden’s opponent Donald Trump has been able to dominate the media spotlight during the coronavirus pandemic through his almost-daily media conferences which have attracted large audiences.
Trump has also started to travel again, flying to Pennsylvania on Friday (AEDT) this week and to Arizona last week.
But the Biden campaign says Biden is staying put for now, with no plans to travel. Biden’s age puts him in the highest risk category if he contracts the coronavirus and it is unclear how an on-the-ground campaign would work while maintaining his safety.
Biden denies that his home-based campaign is a problem and says he is trying to “set an example” for the country by following the stay-at-home advice of coronavirus medical experts.
“Everybody says, you know, ‘Biden’s hiding,’ but I tell you something, we’re doing very well,’ Biden says. “We’re winning, if you look at all the polling data. I’m not saying that’s going to last until November, I don’t know, but right now the idea that somehow we are being hurt by my keeping to the rules and following the instructions that are put forward by the docs is absolutely bizarre.
“I reject the premise that somehow this is hurting us. There is no evidence of that,” he says.
Trump has goaded Biden over his home-based campaign, accusing him of hiding in the basement of his house rather than being willing to debate him in person.
“We have a sleepy guy in the basement of the house that the press is giving the free pass to who doesn’t want to do debates because of Covid,” says Trump.
Biden currently enjoys a national 4.5 point lead over Trump, 47.7 per cent to 43.2 per cent according to the RealClear Politics average of polls. According to RCP Biden also holds a modest lead over Trump in key battleground states that will determine the election, but the margins are almost meaningless at this early stage of the campaign.
The polls show that despite widespread criticism of Trump’s leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, he remains competitive with Biden.
Some Democrat strategists have argued that Trump is damaging himself with his erratic handling of the pandemic and that it is best for Biden to keep a low profile while the president sabotages himself.
Others say it is not enough to hope that Trump will defeat himself. They say Biden must leave his bubble at some point soon and try to conduct the most traditional campaign possible in the current circumstances to sell his policies on healthcare, immigration, the economy and his plan to manage the pandemic.
Although Biden is a relatively poor public campaigner, he is a people-person and thrives off personal interactions with voters when on the campaign trail. By contrast he appears wooden and stilted when campaigning via video.
But there may be relatively few safe opportunities for in-person campaigning while the virus remains prevalent.
Democrats are discussing whether the most important set-piece of political theatre during the campaign - the Democratic National Convention in August - should now be a virtual convention for safety reasons. No decision has yet been made.
Either way, Democrats believe Biden will have to leave home and hit the campaign trail at some stage soon to sell his candidacy to the American people.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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