Biden tests cost, benefit of running virtually
Democrats never dreamed that President Donald Trump would spend more time in Wisconsin this week than Joe Biden.
But that’s one consequence of staging a remote convention, and another oddity of a virtual campaign.
“We were looking forward to beer and brats. We were looking forward to pandemonium,” said Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin. “And all we got was a pandemic.”
When Biden canceled his trip to Milwaukee for the convention, Republicans accused him of “repeating the mistakes” of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who famously neglected Wisconsin before losing the state by 22,748 votes
four years ago.
“He’s just completely mailing it in here,” Wisconsin GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt said of Biden on Tuesday. “He’s hiding from Wisconsin.”
Pandemic aside, it’s pretty fair to say the Biden campaign is not actually ignoring Wisconsin.
The Democrats’ decision to stage their convention in Milwaukee was explicitly about not repeating the political sin of taking Wisconsin for granted in 2016.
So is the party’s ad strategy, which is always the ultimate tell, since it involves such a huge share of a campaign’s resources.
Clinton didn’t air ads in Wisconsin until the very end of her campaign.
But Democrats have prioritized the state this time.
Wisconsin is an advertising battleground
Since April, the top 10 media markets in the country for the Biden campaign and its allies include three in Wisconsin, according to an analysis of broadcast advertising traffic posted this week by the Wesleyan Media Project.
Green Bay is No. 2 in the country (after Phoenix). La Crosse is No. 6. And Milwaukee is No. 8.
The Trump side has aired more ads than the Biden side in these three markets since April, but the Biden side has aired more ads since mid-July.
A recent analysis of broadcast and cable advertising by political scientist Ken Goldstein of the University of San Francisco showed that Wisconsin was seeing more pro-Biden ad spending per electoral college vote than any other state. (It was also seeing more proTrump ad spending per electoral vote than any other state).
“It’s an absolutely different world, different assessment, different reality, different budget,” said Goldstein, comparing the strategic judgments made by Democrats in 2016 and 2020.
Can virtual be effective?
But while it’s crazy to suggest the Biden campaign is ignoring Wisconsin, it’s fair to ask how politically effective Biden’s more virtual approach to the campaign will turn out to be here.
This is not the “Wisconsin-y” convention home-state Democrats had hoped for. From the perspective of a TV or online viewer, it could be happening anywhere.
Having a physical Democratic convention in Milwaukee was never going to have a major impact on the fight for Wisconsin. Lots of parties have lost their convention host states in November.
But the money, the volunteers, the energy, the level of public attention within Wisconsin on a home-state convention — it’s not nothing. Democrats note they are doing a lot of virtual politics and organizing around the convention. But the specific home-state effects of a convention (as modest as they may be) are undoubtedly diminished by going remote.
More broadly, we now have two different campaigns adapting very differently to the pandemic.
Republicans boast about the fact that they have continued door to door canvassing in the pandemic. Democrats boast about the fact they have gone entirely to digital and phone outreach in order not to bother or endanger people at their doors.
Biden canceled his trip to Milwaukee to accept the nomination, citing the pandemic. Republicans say Biden is campaigning from a bunker. “Where’s Joe?” their electronic billboards in Milwaukee asked this week.
“What just baffles me is he can’t even do a symbolic visit. He can’t get on a private plane and come to Milwaukee to accept the nomination,” Republican Hitt said on a press call.
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson said on the same call, “I think it is very odd and I think the American people should be asking some very serious questions about why (Biden) isn’t more available” to reporters.
Trump held a rally Monday in Oshkosh and Vice President Mike Pence plans a visit Wednesday to Darien in Walworth County.
Hitt said the events are conducted with safeguards.
Democrats say Trump is endangering people.
“Right now, dumb people come to Wisconsin and have rallies,” Democratic congressman Mark Pocan said in an interview. “To come to Wisconsin not wearing masks and have other people not wearing masks all come together and not socially distance is really stupid.”
During a virtual convention media briefing Tuesday, I asked former secretary of state and former U.S. senator John Kerry about whether he thinks anything is lost in a virtual campaign. When he ran against GOP President George W. Bush in 2004, they both crisscrossed Wisconsin in buses and campaigned in small towns as if they were running for the state Legislature.
“Oh, I think no one should underestimate the power of virtual communication, I mean we’re talking, you and I, right now. I think it may even eliminate some of the chaff and allow people to focus on the message and get things out with a clarity that you might not otherwise get in the back and forth of the other kind of retail (campaign),” he said.
“I suspect that Vice President Biden will find a way to get events to take place where we’re not putting people at risk and it’s not irresponsible. But I think most people are admiring the fact that he’s been living by the rules, he’s listening to the scientists, he’s listening to the medical experts,” said Kerry, saying that “contrasts pretty starkly” with Trump’s approach.
Kerry said the fact Biden is leading in the polls suggests he is “not having trouble getting his message through.”
And Biden’s interest in keeping the focus on Trump is a political argument for keeping a lower profile.
But at some point, he may find himself under growing pressure to put himself more directly in front of voters and the media.
Kerry, a veteran of a far more traditional campaign, suggested the virtual campaign of 2020 is politically uncharted territory.
It’s “an experiment,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Craig Gilbert has covered every presidential campaign since 1988 and chronicled Wisconsin’s role as a swing state at the center of the nation’s political divide. Gilbert has served as a writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Lubar Fellow at Marquette Law School and a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he studied public opinion, survey research, voting behavior and statistics. Email him at craig.gilbert@jrn.com and follow him on Twitter: @WisVoter.