Biden urged to step up campaigning
Some Democrats warn Joe Biden may not be doing enough to excite voters.
In July, as the coronavirus pandemic raged, Joseph R Biden Jr made one trip to a battleground state. In August, he again visited just one swing state. And on the second weekend in September, less than eight weeks before Election Day, Mr Biden’s only activity was going to church near his Delaware home. Mr Biden’s restraint has spilled over into his campaign operation, which was late to appoint top leaders in key states and embraced a far more cautious approach to in-person engagement than President Trump, and even some other Democratic candidates. While the Trump campaign claims it is knocking on a million doors a week, the Biden team is relying heavily on TV ads and contacting voters largely through phone calls, text messaging programmes and other digital outreach.
That guarded strategy reflects the bet Mr Biden’s campaign has made for months: that American voters will reward a sober, responsible approach that mirrors the ways the pandemic has upended their own lives, and follows scientific guidance that Mr Trump almost gleefully flouts.
Yet as Mr Trump barrels ahead with crowded, risky rallies, some Democrats in battleground states are growing increasingly anxious about the trade-offs Mr Biden has made. With some polls tightening since the beginning of the summer, they are warning him that virtual events may not be enough to excite voters, and urging him to intensify in-person outreach.
Mr Biden has begun to accelerate the pace of his travel, and last week is one of the busiest he has had in months, with two speeches in Delaware, a trip to Florida and an appearance at a CNN town hall on Thursday near his hometown, Scranton, Pennsylvania. On Friday he campaigned in Minnesota.
Yet the concern among these Democrats is whether, in closely fought states that may be won on the margins, the Biden campaign is engaging every possible voter with an affirmative case for his candidacy, when the other side simply has more traditional tactics they are willing to use.
“It feels like asymmetric warfare,” said Matt Munsey, the Democratic chairman in Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania, one of the counties Mr Trump narrowly flipped in 2016, referring to Mr Biden’s approach versus Mr Trump’s.
Livestreamed events were “not necessarily reaching people”, Mr Munsey cautioned. And though he praised Mr Biden for “getting out there more”, he expressed frustration that his in-person events were kept so small: The campaign has been so wary about exceeding crowd limits, he said, that local leaders have complained of not being invited.
Compounding the challenge is an on-theground operation that was weak during the primary season and was slow to scale up in the general election. Strapped for cash after the primaries and uncertain about how to campaign amid a national lockdown, the Biden team initially refrained from greatly expanding its staff.
It entered the summer without state directors in critical battlegrounds like Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, and efforts to establish local operations stretched deep into the summer.
Now Democrats from Florida to Nevada have worried that the team is behind where it should be in engaging some core constituencies, a problem that may also have implications for new voter registrations.
Beyond the risk of leaving voters feeling overlooked, Mr Biden’s limited travel schedule provided ammunition to Mr Trump, who has repeatedly mocked him for rarely straying from his Delaware home. “You need a lot of energy to do this job properly,” Mr Trump said at a campaign event in Phoenix on Monday, adding that “you can’t be sitting in your basement for four days”.
Democrats have no interest in replicating Mr Trump’s rallies, which pose health risks and also turn off voters who are alarmed by the dangers of Covid-19. Mr Biden has been eager to make the race a referendum on Mr Trump and his stewardship of the pandemic, a game plan that polls generally suggest is working, including with traditionally Republican-leaning constituencies like seniors.
Now flush with cash, the Biden team is active on the airwaves, and on Wednesday announced it would spend more than US$65 million (2.02 billion baht) on paid advertising in battleground states this week.
In a briefing with reporters earlier this month, Mr Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, said the team had more than 2,500 staff members who were “supporting the organising across our battleground states”.
Still, Mr Biden has visited Wisconsin only once in 2020, for a one-day trip to Kenosha two weeks ago after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Until last week, he had made no trips to Michigan since the primary election there in March. He has yet to travel this year to Arizona.
In New Hampshire, where Mr Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, campaigned on Wednesday, some Democrats have raised alarms as polls show a tightening race in a state Hillary Clinton barely won. “I’ve been telling them they need to get their signs out,” said State Senator Lou D’Allesandro, a veteran New Hampshire Democrat and early Biden supporter. “We need to be doing more in direct engagement. We are beginning to see that.”
In Ohio, Danny O’Connor, the county recorder in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, urged Mr Biden’s campaign to “start hitting doors in order to make sure we’re getting as much turnout as we can”.
“A Zoom connect or whatever just doesn’t replace standing on someone’s door and asking them to commit to vote and looking them in the eye and telling them why you’re supporting someone for the most important position in the world,” added Mr O’Connor.
Many party officials say they are confident that Mr Biden’s strategy is both sensible and effective. Local officials in Wisconsin say they are seeing great enthusiasm for Mr Biden and expressed confidence that he would win the state in November.
Mary Arnold, the Democratic chairwoman in rural Columbia County, said she heard many pleas for Mr Biden to come to Wisconsin a few months ago. But recently, she said, people have been more accepting of Mr Biden’s strategy, including keeping his events small. “I’m getting this much stronger sense that people respect him for that decision because he doesn’t want to kill people,” she said.
Many of Mr Biden’s allies said they were content to have Mr Biden mostly remain at his house in the summer, not wanting to interrupt what they viewed as Mr Trump’s self-sabotage.
Still, in late August, as Mr Trump intensified his “law and order” message and painted Mr Biden as a “Trojan horse” of the liberal left, demands among Democrats to see Mr Biden travelling more and speaking to voters directly reached a fever pitch. Aides in early September previewed a fall strategy that included an escalated travel schedule, and a promise the candidate has made good on the past two weeks.