—–
Because of the Wuhan virus outbreak, Joe Biden has spent the vast majority of the last three months in his basement running for president.
He’s had some embarrassing moments, like the bizarre Tampa, Florida virtual campaign rally where he looked and sounded more like Max Headroom than President Obama’s former VP.
He’s had some unintentionally illuminating moments, like when he infamously told New York radio show host Charlamagne Tha God, who is black, that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
There was also the garbled, incoherent answer he gave to “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos when he asked Biden what he would say to people who said they wouldn’t vote for him because they believed Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against him.
But even with all that and more happening as Biden has struggled to run a presidential campaign in the middle of a pandemic, Biden surrogate Terry McAuliffe says it’s best Biden stays in the basement for as long as it takes:
“People say all the time, ‘Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement,’” McAuliffe told the “monthly breakfast” of the Norfolk City Democratic Committee. “He’s fine in the basement. Two people see him a day: his two body people. That’s it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump’s doing.”
McAuliffe served as campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. At the Zoom videoconference, he was introduced by a senior Norfolk Democrat, Charlie Stanton, who compared soldiers who participated in the D-Day landing to modern-day Antifa members.
“It’s hard for the vice president to break through,” McAuliffe told the group. “You’ve got the COVID crisis. He’s not a governor, doesn’t have the National Guard. He’s not the president, doesn’t have the briefing room. He needs to come out strategically. And when he says something like he did on race relations two days ago, it needs to have a big impact — thoughtful, and that’s what we’re preferring that he actually do at the time.”
Watch:
Saying “it’s hard for the vice president to break through” is just utter garbage. As they are every presidential election cycle, the media have been nothing more than campaign arms for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, plumping his pillow and painting him in the most flattering of lights at every turn.
What McAuliffe is implicitly stating here is that the less Biden appears on the streets and in public the better off he’ll be. The reasons why are clear.
Throughout the entirety of his pre-coronavirus campaign, Biden was caught in one gaffe after another while cameras rolled, whether it was during a campaign speech or at a debate or during the few TV interviews he did. It happened so often that questions began to be raised even among Democrats about his age and health and whether or not he had the stamina it takes to run for president.
But when it looked like Sen. Bernie Sanders was edging towards the nomination, the remaining Democratic candidates put their differences with and concerns about Biden aside and went full court press on his campaign, because they feared Sanders would be a sure loser against Trump in the fall election.
So Biden became what some called the “last great hope” for Democrats to defeat Trump and they, along with their allies in the mainstream media, have done everything they can to pull him over the finish line, just like they did with Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In concert, the media and Democrats have run interference for Biden every chance they get, like when they treated him as though he was the victim in Tara Reade’s story, and when they’ve ignored his gaffes or boiled them down to “Joe being Joe” before trying to quickly move on.
But even though Biden himself seems to believe his basement campaign is working well for him (and there is some merit to this claim), pretty soon he’s going to have to come out of the basement and actually face voters and reporters.
That’s what worries McAuliffe and other Biden surrogates the most. Because his basement gaffes, while noteworthy, will seem like child’s play compared to what we’ll get from Biden once he hits the campaign trail again – not to mention how he’ll be in the debates against Trump.
As they say, stay tuned.
