Veterans of former President Barack Obama’s campaigns and administration are not impressed with how Joe Biden’s campaign is adjusting to a digital format while the coronavirus pandemic keeps him from traditional campaign activities indefinitely.
Biden on Monday emerged from his Wilmington, Delaware, basement and onto computer screens with a live address delivered in a new studio build in his home. It showed that the campaign still has many technical and stylistic kinks to work out.
“There are things he could do. You can do things that are more interesting than giving poorly produced quasi-presidential speeches,” David Axelrod, chief strategist on Obama’s 2008 campaign, told the Washington Post.
Jon Favreau, a Pod Save America co-host and Obama administration alumnus, criticized the campaign’s decision to have Biden deliver scripted remarks in his livestream. At one point in his first livestream, Biden waved his hand at whoever was operating the script and awkwardly moved to another point in his remarks.
“You could tell he was uncomfortable,” Favreau, a former Obama chief speechwriter, said in an episode recorded Monday. “Joe Biden’s strength is his empathy and how he can comfort people at a time like this.”
A live format, and trying to keep Biden on script, may not be the best strategy to showcase Biden’s talent at connecting with people.
“This is a cliche of all cliches,” said Jon Lovett, another former Obama administration staffer and Pod Save America host, “but this needs to be his fireside chat.”
“I want him sitting in a f—ing armchair, I want his sleeves rolled up, I want him home, I want there to be a f—ing dog sitting in front of the goddamn fireplace,” Lovett said. “And I want him to start by saying, ‘Hey, everyone.’ And I want him to talk to us like he’s right there.”
Biden broke from a scripted livestream format on Tuesday and Wednesday with a blitz of television interviews and a “happy hour” livestreamed conversation with younger voters. His campaign also announced that he will start a podcast.
But some think that candidate, who largely avoided giving interviews for much of his campaign, needs to ramp up the number of interviews he gives.
“Joe needs to be on TV and radio several hours a day. There are no rallies. Live-streams go to a narrow audience. This is how we connect with voters without delay,” tweeted Christopher Hale, who is a delegate for Biden and a former congressional candidate who worked on religious outreach in Obama’s reelection campaign.
And while Biden has criticized President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic himself, some think that he has not adequately countered Trump’s press briefings and should lean more on his circle of advisers.
“Biden could be creating a very favorable juxtaposition by assembling a shadow cabinet,” Brian Fallon, who was press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and worked in the Obama White House before that, told Vanity Fair. “Doing almost a mirror image version of Trump’s press conferences in which Biden is saying, ‘Where are the damn tests?’ and laying the wood to Trump.”
The strategists acknowledged, however, that Biden and his campaign are in an unprecedented and tough position.
“I have some sympathy for him because it’s a hard thing. He has no formal responsibility. You can’t go out. You can’t have events. It’s hard,” Axelrod said.
“I give them a lot of leeway to slowly ramp this up,” Favreau said.
