Biden beams from his basement as Trump rages above

As Donald Trump tanks in the polls, his team is desperate to goad the presumptive Democrat nominee out into the open.

Joe Biden campaigns in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, last week. Picture: AFP

In March, when the coronavirus forced Joe Biden to run his presidential campaign from the basement of his Delaware home, there was much mirth from his Republican opponents.

Now, as Donald Trump tanks in the polls, there is less laughter and his team is desperate to goad the Democrat into the open.

Trump’s allies have taunted Biden on Twitter, tallying the days since he held a press conference — 88 and counting — and calling him “Punxsutawney Joe”, a reference to the groundhog ­famous for its annual appearance in Pennsylvania.

It seems, however, that flying under the radar and allowing Trump to dominate the race is proving to be highly effective.

“It has worked out great for Biden so far,” says Kyle Kondik, a director of Virginia University’s centre for politics. “If the incumbent is unpopular, a big thing that any challenger wants to do is make the election a referendum on the incumbent — and you do that by focusing the public’s attention on them.”

Both nationwide and state polls show Biden as a clear frontrunner, silencing Democrats who have urged the former vice-­president to be more visible.

He led Trump by 14 percentage points in a New York Times and Siena College poll last Wednesday. The next day, a Fox News poll showed Biden beating the President in six of the key battleground states.

During a town-hall style interview on Fox News on Thursday, Trump seemingly let slip how shaken he is.

“Here’s a guy, doesn’t talk. Nobody hears him. Whenever he does talk, he can’t put two sentences together. I don’t want to be nice or un-nice, OK? But, I mean, the man can’t speak,” he railed.

“And he’s going to be your president because some people don’t love me, maybe.”

How long can Biden continue his stealth strategy?

“The game plan Joe Biden is executing is working. Direction is more important than speed, and when the plays you are running are working, you don’t change up your game plan,” says Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic Party political strategist.

Nevertheless, with just over four months until the election, staying out of the limelight will soon not be an option for Biden.

He plans to name his choice for vice-president next month, and although the Democratic ­national convention in Milwaukee in August will be largely online, Biden will still attend to accept the party’s nomination.

The first of three one-on-one election debates then takes place in September.

“The debates pose an existential political risk for Biden and it wouldn’t surprise me if he uses some kind of excuse to get out of some of them,” says Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist.

Trump’s team uses Biden’s refusal of a fourth debate to paint the 77-year-old as frail and fearful. “An earlier and longer debate schedule is necessary so Americans can see the clear difference between President Trump’s vibrant leadership and Biden’s confused meandering,” says Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director.

Republicans long for Biden, who is famously gaffe-prone, to get out on the road.

Trump seized a rare chance last week, loudly sneering after his opponent referred to “over 120 million” Americans dying from COVID-19. The real figure is closer to 130,000.

However, with many voters critical of the President’s handling of the pandemic, it was not a palpable hit. Nor do Trump’s missiles against “Sleepy Joe” as a “puppet of the radical left” land with the same force as they did against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Kondik points out that, although Biden is still losing among white voters without college ­degrees, the margins are smaller among those voters than they were with Clinton.

“If he can just claw back a small portion of those voters, dominate among non-white voters and white college voters, that’s a path to victory,” he says.

The Sunday Times