by Hans Izaak Kriek*
Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders is receiving advice to quickly exit the 2020 presidential campaign.
“A small group of Bernie Sanders’s top aides and allies, including his campaign manager and his longtime strategist have encouraged the independent senator to consider withdrawing from the presidential race,” the Washington Post reported, citing “two people with knowledge of the situation.”
The group reportedly includes longtime strategist Jeff Weaver, campaign manager Faiz Shakir, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
“Sanders himself has become more open to the prospect of dropping out, according to one of the people with knowledge of the situation and another close ally, especially if he suffers a significant defeat in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, which polls suggest Joe Biden will win handily,” The Post reported. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), however, is reportedly urging him to continue his bid.
“The split in Sanders’s inner circle to some degree reflects the hybrid nature of his political identity as both a traditional politician and a movement leader. Advisers with stronger ties to the Democratic Party have been more vocal in urging him to contemplate a withdrawal, while independent activists have been pushing for Sanders to remain in the race,” the newspaper reported.
Joe Biden is campaigning from his basement and it might help him win
If we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, Joe Biden almost certainly would be winning Democratic primaries and locking up the nomination about now coasting from one victory speech to another, basking in the cheers of his supporters and wall-to-wall media coverage.
Instead, the former vice president is marooned at his home doing a glitch-filled virtual town hall on Facebook Live and little-noticed cable news interviews in between phoning donors and volunteers to keep his presidential campaign afloat.
For a week or so, Biden’s struggle to stay visible caused a ripple of panic among Democrats.
“Where’s Biden?” memes pinballed across the internet after several days in which he didn’t appear on TV. He eventually reappeared on the daytime talk show ‘The View’ from his basement.
Part of Biden’s predicament is inescapable. A deadly contagion is far more pressing than the November election, and will remain so as long as Americans are dying in droves and the economy is heading off a cliff.
But in an odd way, being out of the public eye may be good for Biden’s prospects. He’s running as the I’m-not-Trump candidate, and voters will know that next fall even if he’s not on TV now.
Any reelection race is a referendum on the incumbent. That will be even more true for President Trump given the public health and economic catastrophes ravaging the country.
The most important factor in November will be what voters think about Trump’s leadership in this time of extraordinary crisis: Did he do a good job or a poor job trying to quell the pandemic and rescue the economy? In effect, Trump is running against himself.
With the pandemic dominating our lives, Biden can only cause himself trouble if he tries to become the center of attention. People want to hear from the leaders making decisions, not from critics on the side.
Besides, unlimited TV time carries a risk for a candidate known as a gaffe machine.
The Biden basement tapes have been mostly error free, unless you count the time he coughed into his fist during an interview with CNN. Jake Tapper scolded him to use his elbow.
Biden holds virtual meetings with campaign staff, appears in digital town halls and does about a dozen media appearances a week. After a rocky start involving garbled audio and missed cues, the broadcasts have improved considerably.
“We were building the airplane while we were flying it,” a campaign aide said. Biden mostly plays the role of Shadow President, explaining what he would do in this crisis if he were in the Oval Office.
More important from the campaign’s standpoint is the message he wants to send about temperament: He projects calm, steady, predictable in short, the opposite of Trump.
In one recent appearance, Biden ticked through a list of proposals on how to implement the $2-trillion economic rescue package that Congress passed last month, including measures to expand work-sharing arrangements among furloughed workers, not exactly headline stuff.
But that was the point. To voters caught in a terrifying crisis, boring might be beautiful. It was a pandemic version of Biden’s winning message in the primaries: a return to normalcy.
He struggles to strike the right tone when he talks about Trump. He tries to do two contradictory things at once — be tough on the president, but also claim that he’s merely offering “constructive criticism.
In a normal election year, a presidential campaign goes into mild hibernation between the end of the primary campaign (which hasn’t quite happened) and the party conventions (which may not happen in their traditional form this year).
In a normal year, Biden would use this time to raise money, build a larger organization and set his general election strategy. He’s doing all that now only working from home, like the rest of us.
Most voters don’t pay close attention to the presidential race until Labor Day or later. No matter what course the pandemic takes, we’ll be a different country next fall — and the conditions we face then will shape the election.
So, Democrats should try to relax. There’s not much Biden can do now except hunker down in his basement and wait, like the rest of us, for the all-clear.
Democratic Convention postponed
The Democratic National Committee is postponing the party’s presidential nominating convention in Milwaukee to August 17, the week before the Republican Party’s convention.
The delay from July 13 came after likely nominee Joe Biden publicly called for the convention to be rescheduled in response to the coronavirus pandemic. And it followed weeks of behind-the-scenes discussions with party leaders and the campaigns of the two remaining presidential candidates, Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
While there has been talk about having a virtual convention, party officials and Biden, the presumptive nominee, would like to have a live event as long as it can be done safely, according to sources within the DNC and one with Biden’s campaign.
“Joe earned this, and we do want something to mark that, but it’s really complicated,” the Biden campaign source said.
The new date would put the Democratic National Convention back-to-back with its Republican counterpart, which is set to begin Aug. 24 in Charlotte, N.C. The proximity in time presents messaging challenges for both sides: Biden will not have as much time to enjoy a potential polling bounce before the Republican National Convention begins dominating coverage. And Republicans will not have as much time to plan out responses to speeches and events in Milwaukee.
The new dates also complicate the Biden campaign’s financial situation, because it will not be able to access general election funds until August instead of July. Biden has relied more on wealthy donors who gave the maximum amount than Bernie Sanders did. But the former vice president isn’t legally allowed to access the portion of those contributions dedicated to the general election until he’s officially the nominee.
The coronavirus has undoubtedly taken a toll on Biden’s fundraising just as he was starting to pull in record sums for his campaign. However, Biden’s campaign staff was relatively small for a de facto nominee because of his earlier struggles with fundraising, so the campaign was used to subsisting on less than its rivals.
Biden aides said the campaign has saved additional money during the coronavirus crisis because it scaled back on advertising, didn’t go on a hiring binge and doesn’t have to pay the overhead of a traditional campaign as the candidate and staff shelter in place.
“It’s amazing how much you save if you don’t put on rallies and have to fly across the country every day,” an adviser said.
Another Biden campaign official said the new dynamic was manageable. "We can still raise and spend primary money up to the time we are the nominee, and we can raise (and not spend) general money," the official said. "This is about when the 2008 convention took place, and it didn’t hurt us.”
The DNC’s decision drew praise from officials involved in the convention planning.
Alex Lasry, senior vice president of the Milwaukee Bucks and a leader of the Milwaukee convention bid, told: “This is the right decision for the safety of those involved in the convention and for Milwaukee. An August convention will provide a much-needed economic boost for Milwaukee and Wisconsin as we come out of this unprecedented time.”
*International political commentator for European Business Review and editor-in-chief at Kriek Media International
By: N. Peter Kramer
