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TThe Tampa, Florida demonstration by Joe Biden on Thursday night began as it normally had, before a once-in-a-century pandemic transformed every aspect of American life, including the presidential campaign. A local high school student recited the pledge of allegiance, a campaign organizer begged supporters to volunteer, and a local DJ spun R&B music among the speakers.
But in a sign of how profoundly the coronavirus crisis has reshaped American politics, that’s where the similarities ended.
With much of the USA USA Still under lock and key, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate has been forced to carry out his campaign to unseat Donald Trump online. It has not always been easy.
His campaign’s first attempt to recreate a traditional rally, part of a virtual swing in Florida’s battlefield state, was described by his opponents as an “unmitigated technological failure.” The video transmission was irregular and pixelated. The audio was choppy, making some comments almost incomprehensible. And there were long delays between the speakers, and at one point the power went dark for several minutes.
“I’m on?” Biden asked, beaming on the broadcast from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he has been isolated since mid-March. An off-camera voice answered yes. Biden removed a pair of aviator sunglasses as he walked towards the camera.
Good afternoon, Tampa. Thank you so much for tuning in, ”he continued, with a touch of irritation in his voice. “I wish we could have done this together, and it would have been a little bit easier.”
For nearly two months, Biden has been the test subject in a new political experiment: running for president at the age of Covid-19.
Social distancing restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the virus have already wiped out the campaign for a victory tour to mark his rise to the Democratic nomination. You may well deny Democrats the opportunity to formally nominate him in person at the party’s national convention this summer. Endorsements from former rivals and party leaders occur online with varying degrees of fanfare. . The remote setup, anathema to Biden’s political approach, which he slaps and delivers with joy, has left the candidate away from voters and vying for visibility.
However, putting aside technical difficulties, his lockdown campaign appears to be working.
In recent weeks, Biden has expanded his leadership over Trump as the president’s support slips amid growing disapproval of his response to the pandemic. Surveys of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona – key battlegrounds Trump won in 2016 – show Biden ahead. At a recent virtual fundraiser last week, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, her new campaign manager, expressed optimism about Biden’s prospects in Florida and Arizona.
“The natural state of this race is to be a referendum on Donald Trump and every time Donald Trump gets close to the microphone he gets hurt,” said Mark Mellman, a veteran Democratic pollster. “That is a very good position for Joe Biden.”
Biden initially struggled to adjust to his cloistered reality. In March, the campaign converted a recreation room in the basement of his home into a studio, though not fast enough for his critics, who launched a “Where’s Joe” campaign to mark the candidate’s relative disappearance on the national stage.
But since then, Biden has been busy. Almost every day he makes appearances on local television news channels or national talk shows. He launched a podcast, where he has arranged conversations with prominent Democratic governors and potential vice presidential candidates. He spends time each day talking to a voter, a front-line worker, campaign volunteers, and he participated in what the campaign called a “virtual rope.”
“So what’s up?” he told Ashley Ruiz, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, one of several voters on the rope line. Tell me about your situation, Ash.
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Biden’s rise in the polls comes as he faces an indictment from Tara Reade, a former aide in his Senate office who accused him of sexual assault in 1993. In an interview this week with Megyn Kelly, the former television host Fox News and NBC, Reade said he should withdraw from the presidential race.
Biden has strongly denied the accusation. “It is not true, I say it unequivocally. It never, ever happened,” he said last week, in an interview addressing his claim for the first time publicly.
Publicly, Democrats, including prominent #MeToo advocates, have They gathered around Biden, although privately some in the party have expressed concern over the continuing trickle of reports on the matter.
So far, the prosecution appears to have marginally damaged his reputation, but not his leadership. Most voters, 86%, are aware of the accusation, according to a Monmouth poll, which found the electorate was divided over whether they considered the claim credible. At the same time, the poll showed Biden nine points ahead of Trump.
Despite the fall in Trump’s electoral fortune, many Democrats remain concerned about Biden’s position and his strategy.
David Axelrod and David Plouffe, two of Barack Obama’s top campaign strategists, implored Biden’s campaign to expand his fingerprint in a New York Times joint opinion piece that compared the atmosphere of the candidate’s home videos. to “an astronaut returning to Earth from the International Space Station.”
“Online speeches from your basement will not be enough,” they wrote.
Lis Smith, the former senior aide to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, followed up with an op-ed on Thursday that offered a plan to make Biden the “baddest bad boy and disruptive in the media game.” She suggested that her campaign use television appearances and digital content to highlight Biden’s empathy, a trait that even supporters say the president has lacked in response to the increasing number of deaths from coronavirus.
Part of the campaign’s evolving digital strategy includes partnering with groups that already have an online presence, such as JoeMamas2020, a national coalition of “moms, caregivers, moms-to-be, aunts and all the parent figures in the middle” with approximately 27,000 Facebook and 1,200 Twitter followers. The group has helped amplify Biden’s appearances and policy proposals while spreading the word about upcoming events.
Julie Zebrak, co-founder of the group, said the online army is growing with energized women to help choose a candidate who will end Twitter’s presidency.
“We are all extremely excited about Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump,” he said.
However, the same traits that draw Biden to a growing coalition of suburban and Republican women from Never Trump have failed to excite younger, more progressive voters. It’s not that they prefer Trump, they don’t, but a lack of enthusiasm among those voters could create problems in November if they stay home or vote for a third-party candidate.
The campaign has also increased its reach to young people, who overwhelmingly supported Biden’s rival Bernie Sanders. On Friday, Biden presented his economic speech in an appearance on NowThis, a heavy social media outlet with a young and progressive audience.
“This crisis hit harder and will last longer because Donald Trump has spent the past three years undermining the central pillars of our economic strength,” Biden said in remarks that attacked Trump’s stimulus efforts as a kind of “cronyism” and corporate well-being. Before he began to speak, Biden removed a face mask, a reprimand from the president who had refused to wear one.
Still, new research conducted on behalf of NextGen America found that many young people were not convinced that Biden’s policies met the scale of the challenges facing their generation.
This makes the efforts of groups like the Progressive Turnout Project, which endorsed it this week, even more important. In the coming months, the group is investing more than $ 52 million to obtain low-propensity Democratic voters, including youth and people of color, in 17 key battlefield states.
“The best we can do is go knock on doors and have face-to-face conversations with voters,” said Alex Morgan, the group’s executive director. “We are still looking to do that. But he will knock on that door and then take a few steps back and have a more distant conversation. “
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Biden’s campaign also faces another looming threat. Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, who left the Republican party last year after voting to impeach Trump, recently announced that he would seek the libertarian party’s nomination.
His entry has alarmed Democrats, who fear it may mislead Never Trump voters who would otherwise endorse Biden, particularly in the home state of Amash, Michigan, where third-party candidates garnered a combined 5% of the vote in 2016. Hillary Clinton lost the state by just 10,704 votes, less than 0.25%.
Many Democrats believe that Biden’s fate may depend on his ability to persuade his own side to vote.
“Trump has shown no desire or ability to moderate for those undecided voters in this election,” said Addisu Demissie, who served as Cory Booker’s presidential campaign manager. “So those voters are likely to end up being Biden voters or non-voters or third-party voters, and that’s the competition.”
This week, Trump traveled to the Arizona state battlefield, where he visited a medical mask facility without wearing one. The visit was a token of his administration’s drive to reopen the US economy. But there were unmistakable elements of his campaign rallies, including the music played when Trump finished his remarks (the Rolling Stones can’t always get what they want))
Trump’s cross-country adventure was in stark contrast to Biden’s virtual turnaround in Florida, which included a rally, a roundtable in Jacksonville, and a local news appearance in Tampa. Technical problems only further highlighted the limitations of his confinement.
But the coronavirus has also changed Trump’s strategy, erasing the booming economy that has made it a centerpiece of his reelection campaign. In recent weeks, his campaign has almost abandoned defending the president’s leadership, instead of focusing his efforts on lowering Biden.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale anticipated the attack on Twitter this week, comparing Trump’s reelection monster to the Death Star from Star Wars movies. “In a few days we started to press FIRE for the first time”, wrote.
As Trump prepares to make even more use of the advantages of incumbency, Biden faces his greatest test yet. Can you really lead a Rebel Alliance from your basement?
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