I’ve been surprised at how Biden stayed the in the lead this whole primary season so far despite campaigning less and giving more passive debate performances than the other frontrunners. Slate has an interesting take on why this is so:
What is astounding is how well Biden’s passivity has worked. Normally, a candidate’s success depends on energy: an ability to stand out, command eyeballs, drive the narrative. But in our current political landscape, Biden’s lack of reaction—and his staff’s rumored efforts to keep him away from the press as much as possible—might accidentally be amounting to something like a superpower. It’s true that Biden’s lack of media appearances has been criticized in some quarters. “They have him in the candidate-protection program,” former Obama advisor David Axelrod told Olivia Nuzzi, of the vice-president’s handlers. “I don’t know if you can do that. I don’t know if you can get through a whole campaign that way. Either he can hack it or he can’t hack it. If you’re worried the candidate can hurt himself talking to a reporter, that’s a bad sign.” This has been the conventional wisdom—exposure gets you votes—but Biden might be proving it wrong. In a landscape saturated by the furious exhalations of a president who can’t stop reacting and responding to every new development, restraint might have its charms for an understudied demographic: the American voter who wants nothing more than to tune out.
What do you think of this explanation? And do you think it will continue to be a strength for Biden in the general election? It makes sense, in a depressing way, but I’m skeptical about whether it will remain true in the general election, after the Republican smear machine and trollbots start working full-time on smearing the Democratic nominee. If our nominee is Biden, will most voters still continue to yawn and continue to favor Biden over Trump because they’re tired, and will these tired voters still muster enough energy to go to the polls on election day?