Even before I read Michelle Cottle’s OpEd I was struck by the subtitle more than the title.
I won’t use my fair use excerpt to summarize the entire OpEd which essentially describes the low key campaign (as Cottle calls it ”lurking”) efforts Vice President Biden has been making. Most of the OpEd explains how Michelle Cottle thinks Biden needs to utilize the ideas of his former rivals and involve them in his campaign. She recommends he work on coalition building especially with Bernie Sanders supporters.
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She won't get an argument from me when she says that Biden isn’t a compelling communicator like Barack Obama. His forte “is making politics feel personal, with an emphasis on empathy and compassion.” He is doing this in his online messages broadcast to a select audience but obviously this doesn’t get him the major national coverage Trump commands.
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I’ll cut to the author’s conclusion which relates to the subtitle which I think is the salient portion of her essay. I’ve highlighted the last three sentences which I think are the most relevant.
Having essentially secured the nomination, Mr. Biden should move to mine the talent and ideas of former rivals. Now is the time to try out new tricks, while most of the electorate is focused on more pressing matters.
Now is also a prime opportunity for Mr. Biden to do lower-profile coalition building, reaching out to progressive activists and influencers. He has the time and space to woo disappointed Bernie Bros and Elizabeth Warren fans, to let them know he cares.
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey indicates that Mr. Biden’s messaging on the pandemic is not breaking through, but it also gives him an 11-point edge over Mr. Trump in whom voters trust to handle a crisis — and a nine-point edge in whom they trust to handle the coronavirus crisis specifically. As for the election, multiple new polls show Mr. Biden running ahead of the president in battleground states.
Much can happen in six months. But there’s no reason to believe that having Mr. Biden more in the president’s face at this time would help him in November. Better for now to keep the election a referendum on Mr. Trump.
As one former Democratic operative put it, “When a guy is digging his own grave, you don’t fight him for the shovel.”
She ends the a colorful apropos anonymous quote which sums up what I think should be the primary weapon in Biden’s war chest.
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I have often presented the most familiar Sun Tzu quote when I justify how important it is to understand Trump’s psychopathology: “If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” Following this is certainly is relevant to how Biden will defeat Trump.
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However, there is a lesser known Sun Tzu quote which I think applies to the lurking strategy:
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.