Biden’s Silent Campaign Strategy Proves Disastrous Yet Continues Unabated

01.06.2024 04:05

Biden’s poll numbers are dismal, but that’s not deterring him from running a low-profile campaign.

In March, the Biden campaign launched a novel strategy: meeting with individual voters in staged and heavily promoted greetings, rather than holding large rallies. For example, President Joe Biden traveled to Saginaw, Michigan, to meet with a gay couple in their home. The couple was perfectly cast for the role: they are Democratic Party loyalists and one of the men is a Saginaw city councilman. The Biden campaign characterizes the strategy as leveraging Biden’s strength in one-on-one interactions.

A Reuters article that reads like it was planted by Biden’s PR team describes the new strategy thus: “In sharp contrast to the mass rallies hosted by Republican rival Donald Trump — heavy on stagecraft with classic rock playlists, anti-immigration rhetoric, and mostly white audiences — Biden meets with small, more diverse groups of voters for personal conversations.”

The strategy of meeting with trusted Biden supporters in staged and scripted events aims to insulate the aging president from rallies and speaking appearances. At the same time, it allows the president to maintain the appearance of actively campaigning. The problem, of course, is that meeting individually with a few diehard supporters is unlikely to move the needle. Nevertheless, Biden’s advisers have decided that actually putting the candidate on the campaign trail would hurt more than help.

This approach of hiding Biden away as much as possible extends into his presidential duties. Biden is unique from almost all modern presidents in the degree to which he evades the press. He has held less than half as many press conferences as the past six presidents up to this point in their presidencies. In addition, until the end of April, Biden had granted 118 interviews compared to Trump’s 327 and Obama’s 479 during the same period.

Hiding isn’t working. Polls show Trump is leading or in a statistical tie with Biden in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, and ahead in most recent popular vote polls. Democrats are now in a panic. “Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden” was the headline for an article in Politico earlier this week. “A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump,” begins the article. Politico described more than a dozen unnamed “party leaders and operatives” as being in a state of “palpable trepidation.”

Democrats have increased hope that polls will shift in Biden’s favor following Trump’s conviction on all 34 counts in his New York trial. However, whether the trial will significantly affect the election remains far from certain.

Biden better hope that Trump’s conviction will change the course of the race because his team appears certain that increasing visibility via press conferences and rallies would backfire and a quiet campaign can only achieve so much. Moreover, there is ample reason to believe Biden’s advisers are totally correct in believing that hiding Biden away as much as possible is the best course of action. When Biden held a press conference to address fears about his mental acuity brought on by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, it blew up in his face after he misspoke on several instances and came across as an angry old man.

Yet Democrats are increasingly calling for the Biden campaign to shift strategies and make the candidate — and his message — more visible. On Thursday, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), criticized the Biden campaign, telling Politico, “I’m in a battleground state. I know what has and hasn’t been done. I felt a level of disconnection earlier on the message, on the messengers and on mobilization.”

On Wednesday, Biden did make a joint appearance with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aimed at black voters — and seemingly in response to the criticisms that he is failing to connect with them. Some media reports described an excited crowd, but images of the rare Biden rally make it appear poorly attended. More of the same will just be an embarrassment.

This is the cost of having a terrible candidate: the options are limited to maintaining silence or facing repeated failure.

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