{UAH} DEMOCRATS WANT BIDEN TO REMAIN LOCKED UP IN THE BASEMENT Nope he is not campaigning

Stay in hiding place, Joe, Democrats tell Biden

by Emily Larsen, Political Reporter | 

 June 11, 2020 02:19 PM

 

When the coronavirus pandemic first shut down normal election season activities and kept Joe Biden from campaigning normally, Democrats fretted that the former vice president would not be able to garner enough attention to campaign effectively against President Trump.

But numerous recent polls that show the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee with substantial leads over the president suggest the opposite: Staying out of the limelight is good for Biden because the election is not about him. It’s about Trump and his missteps, and Biden is the generic Democratic alternative to another four years of the current administration.

Biden’s campaign is explicitly trying to define the election based on whether or not to give Trump four more years in office. A slide in a Biden campaign strategy briefing last month said, “This election is a referendum on Trump.”

“If the country is asked to have an up or down vote on whether or not Donald Trump should receive four more years, the country would say no, and [the Trump campaign] themselves admit it,” Biden campaign strategist Mike Donilon said during the presentation.

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe plainly explained why Biden does not need to be out in the open during a video call with a local Democratic group over the weekend.

“People say all the time, ‘Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement,’ He’s fine in the basement,” McAuliffe said. “Two people see him a day: his two body people. That's it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump's doing.”

Dislike of Trump is a driving force behind Biden’s favorable numbers. A CNN poll conducted from June 2 to June 5 that found that of those surveyed who said they would pick Biden over Trump if the election were held today, 60% said that their choice was more of a vote against Trump than a vote for Biden.

“In 2016, it was pretty clear from observation (and from analyzing data) that Trump and Clinton both did better when the other was dominating the news. It is possible that the same is true in this election,” said University of Virginia elections analyst Kyle Kondick. “Biden’s lower profile makes it easier for the election to become a referendum.”

He noted, though, that “any election featuring an incumbent president naturally turns into at least something of a referendum on the incumbent, and the state of the country.”

This year’s set of unusual external circumstances — the coronavirus pandemic, mass unemployment, and nationwide protests and social unrest sparked by the death of black Minneapolis man George Floyd after being held under a white officer’s knee — have made the country look worse off than it was four years ago, potentially contributing to a bump for Biden.

Republican strategist Alex Conant told the Washington Examiner that because the former vice president is well known across the country, being confined to his home “didn't hurt him as much as it would have, as it could have hurt another candidate who needed to proactively define themselves.”

That allows Biden to come out at opportune moments that contrast his style with that of the president. Biden made special addresses about Floyd’s death and spoke at his funeral.

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, is working to define “Sleepy Joe” in negative terms in order to make the election a choice between the two candidates. Operatives and surrogates question his mental capacity, try to tie him to the far-left “defund the police” movement, or claim that he is supporting China.

There is time left in the election cycle for the Trump campaign to turn the election into a choice rather than a referendum, but the biggest hurdle to that could be the president himself.

“Trump keeps bringing the focus back to himself,” Conant said. “On days when they want to be talking about Biden's crime bill, Trump is, you know, tweets about a conspiracy theory and completely upends the campaign strategy.”

As Biden slowly starts holding in-person events and ventures out of his house, it is clear that the attention focused on Trump won’t last through the election.

“The spotlight will move to Biden at some point in the future,” Kondick said. “We’ll have to see if the numbers change when that happens.”

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

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