Biden sightings

Biden campaign has a new podcast. Is that it?

With only 7 months to go in the campaign, it's not so much that Joe Biden has disappeared into a shell. It's that the DNC has chosen not to directly take on Donald Trump. That task has been entirely left up to governors and mayors in states and cities hit hardest by the coronavirus and the accompanying failure of federal support.

The daily press conferences held by IL Gov. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lightfoot, have been hard-hitting and effective and offer a model to Democratic Party leaders on how to mobilize public support in these difficult times for organizers and campaigners.

Yesterday's was the best, with Lightfoot delivering a strong kick in the butt to Jared Kushner after he stunned state and city leaders with his comment that "the federal stockpile (of medical equipment) was it’s supposed to be our stockpile... not supposed to be the states’ stockpiles that they then use.”

This is what leadership looks like. pic.twitter.com/TTqIYrT5WJ

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) April 3, 2020

There have been a few Biden sightings in the past week. One in particular caught my eye. It was reported in yesterday's Military Times where Biden was quoted as being critical of the Pentagon's decision to fire Capt. Brett Crozier, the heroic commander of the nuclear aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt who first warned about the spread of COVID on his ship.

“Navy leadership sent a chilling message about speaking truth to power,” Biden tweeted Friday. “The poor judgment here belongs to the Trump administration, not a courageous officer trying to protect his sailors.”

Good for you Joe.

But there was the paragraph further down in the article that caused my stomach to turn.

Biden has suspended most campaigning since the start of the coronavirus outbreak in America last month, but has said in recent days he will speak with Trump about the federal response to the pandemic.

Speak with Trump? Biden and the Democrats had better un-suspend the campaign. start speaking directly to voters (especially in battleground states) and move into attack mode, especially over the issues of how the Republicans are (or aren't) responding to the COVID crisis. Thousands, and possibly millions of lives hang in the balance.

Trump continues his domination of the media as expected. But the Biden camp has at least begun to stir with the launching of a new 2020 campaign podcast. That all well and good. But if that's all they've got, we're likely in for a repeat of 2016.