Joe Is Being Forced To Campaign

I was scratching my head about four vignettes featuring Joe over the past few days and trying to put them in the context of the conventional wisdom from Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics:

There’s little doubt at this point that President Biden’s standing in the polls has improved. In late January of this year, former President Donald Trump led Biden in national head-to-head polls by as many as 4.3 points. As of today, Trump’s lead sits at just two-tenths of a percentage point. Why might we be seeing this?

One answer I might give is that several outlier polls came in over the past couple of weeks that had the effect of skewing the Real Clear Politics average in Biden's favor, which I think was the intent, and Trende for whatever reason is buying into this. In fact, in the first sentence of the quote above, he's comparing apples and oranges -- Trump led Biden in individual polls by "as many as 4.3 points" but he new leads the RCP average by just two tenths. That's basically a meaningless statement.

But what's happening in the real world? Two months ago I linked to an essay by Nate Silver, It's time for the White House to put up or shut up, in which he prescribed a strategy for Biden to improve his prospects for November.

Say that, in any given period of time — maybe over the course of a couple months — Biden has 20 opportunities to do what you might call Improvisational Public Appearances (IPAs). We can define these as events where Biden is not merely making pre-scripted remarks and instead faces sustained questioning from the media, voters or other public figures.

. . . The White House has worked with Biden for a long time and they know his performance varies based on the setting, who he’s taking questions from, and his fatigue level. So what do they do? Well, they do their best to lop off the bottom part of the graph by making excuses for Biden to avoid these IPAs or never scheduling them in the first place.

. . . [As a result of this strategy,] when we see Biden’s public appearances, we’re only getting a truncated sample. And the results still aren't very good.

The analogy is to an NBA player who’s aging and losing his shot. If he only takes wide-open jumpers, his shooting percentage may remain tolerable — but you can observe the decline in his skills from the lack of shooting volume.

Silver's actual prescription was that Joe should do more sit-down interviews with serious journalists. Well, the closest we came this week was "don't move on Haifa".

This comes during an interview with Reshad Hudson from Nexstar Media, where President Biden mistakenly referred to the Israeli city of Haifa as Rafah, a city in Gaza.

He then added, "And I made it clear to Israelis – don’t move on Haifa." The intended reference was to Rafah, a city located in the southern Gaza Strip, bordering Egypt and also a major crossing point.

The problem Silver can't escape is that Biden simply doesn't do well with IPAs, and in fact, he seldom has, ever. But the Haifa episode was just the start. Tuesday also brought the hotel bathroom ramble:

. . . And I was in one of those 8-by-10 bathrooms — you know they have a shower, a toilet, and a sink. And I got a towel on me and shaving cream, and I hear, “Bam, bam, bam,” at my door really loudly. And I wonder, “What the hell is that?”

And I walked to the door and opened it up and standing there was the former governor of the state of Delaware, Elbert N. Carvel, a big guy, about six-five. Talked at you like this. (Pronounced in an accent.) (Laughter.) And the state representative who got defeated four years earlier as a Democratic state rep — who was retired — and one of the — from the family that had more so — more senators appointed than any other family in American history, the — the Tunnells — and a former retired Justice and the — and the state chairman.

And they said — and I’m standing in a towel with shaving cream on my face. (Laughter.) And with that, they looked at me and said — they come in and said, “We’re — we’re coming — we just had dinner. We want to talk to you.”

And I walked in, and I said, “Okay, gentlemen.” And I ran to the bathroom thinking I could put something on. (Laughter.) All I could do is take off the shaving cream. I had on a towel. I walked out — two headboards nailed to one side of the wall, the desk to the other side.

And I’m st- — they’re — he’s sitting on the end of the bed. And I’m sitting down, and they said, “Joe, we just had dinner, and we think you should run for the Senate.”

And then there was the visit to the Wawa store where he couldn't figure out how to close the takeout box:

Biden just stopped by to visit another gas station. He was greeted by 0 supporters.

This is the 2nd time in 24 hours.pic.twitter.com/Jjzq4skqVP

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 18, 2024

This calls to mind a campaign event from back in 1992, George H W Bush's supermarket scanner moment:

A supermarket scanner moment is a political gaffe in which a politician is portrayed as out-of-touch with everyday affairs. The term derives from a 1992 New York Times report that characterized sitting U.S. President George H. W. Bush as being amazed by commonplace supermarket barcode scanner technology at a grocers' convention. Political commentators widely spread the story, portraying Bush as unfamiliar with daily American life. Though other major media outlets soon refuted the report as a mischaracterization, the popular memory of Bush's reported amazement at a supermarket scanner remains one of the most enduring American political myths.

And then there was Joe's Uncle Bosie, who was eaten by cannibals:

Was President Joe Biden's uncle eaten by cannibals? That appears to be what he suggested − twice − this week when he said the remains of his uncle, a military veteran who died during World War II in a plane crash off the New Guinea coast, were not recovered.

Biden's telling differed from an account published by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which says Biden's uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, and two other men "failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash."

. . . "And he got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be − there were a lot of cannibals − for real − in that part of New Guinea," Biden continued.

Cearly the White House is responding to a perceived problem, which must certainly be Joe's continued poor standing in the polls. And they're clearly following some version of Nate Silver's advice: get him into more unscripted "improvisational public appearances", sit-down interviews, gas station visits, chats with union workers, and so forth. I think Silver was being optimistic when he made that recommendation back in February; he thought Joe could do well in some, less well in others, and it was the White House's job to limit his overall appearances but pick the ones where he could play to his strengths.

So far, this isn't working. Joe without a script is likely to be a disaster, but even Joe with a script shows him slurring, dyslexic, and fighting the teleprompter. Silver admits Joe has good days and bad days, but the problem is that putting him on the campaign trail with multiple weekly events is tiring him out, and it's going to increase the number of bad days and bad IPAs. But this is precisely the situation his campaign was able to avoid in 2020: they had him scripted from the basement. Apparently the thinking this year is they can't do this, they have to get him out, active, and interacting, and it's turning out to be one supermarket scanner moment after another.