Biden Doesn’t Have a Bunker Strategy, But He Is Winning the Campaign

The former vice-president is spending a lot of time at home because it’s safer for him, his staff, and his security detail.

I get annoyed when the media perpetuate the idea that Joe Biden is hiding in his “basement” or his “cellar” or a “bunker.” He’s a 77-year-old man living in the midst of a global pandemic that targets the elderly and takes their lives. What Biden is doing is spending most of his time at his rather nice suburban home. It’s safer for him but also for his staff and his security detail.

But, as annoying as this narrative is, it’s Trump who carries the #BunkerBoy hashtag around like an anvil. That too, is unfair, since the right thing to do when the Secret Service asks you to head for the bomb shelter is to head for the bomb shelter.

Marc Caputo and Christopher Cadelago of Politico say that Democrats are “warming” to Biden’s “bunker strategy.” It would be a lot more accurate to say that Democrats have noticed that Biden is surging to a gigantic lead in both the national and the battleground polls. It’s possible to find cranks who insist he should be leading by more, but when the headlines say Biden is ahead by eleven points in Wisconsin and nine in North Carolina, it’s hard to be a convincing critic of his strategy.

There isn’t much to question anyway. He could have followed the Andrew Cuomo model and held dueling press conferences with the president, but that was a terrible idea and was rejected for obvious reasons. Biden doesn’t have access to all the data and cannot command the appearance of Anthony Fauci or Deborah Birx. Conducting a press conference by Zoom is never going to look as good as an appearance at the White House. Unlike Cuomo, Biden can’t actually make any command decisions, so all he’d be doing is trolling the president. Besides, Trump’s coronavirus briefings were completely self-injurious, and why would Biden want to distract attention from them?

It’s an article of faith on the right and among Trump’s campaign strategists that Biden is past his sell-by date and will make verbal gaffes and otherwise show his age if he spends more time talking to the press. But it’s Trump who struggles to drink a glass of water and walk down a slight incline in leather-soled shoes. Biden hasn’t suggested that we nuke a hurricane or publicly pondered why antibiotics won’t kill a virus. Everything Trump does seems to backfire, and all the bad things he wants people to believe about Biden, they are increasingly believing about him.

Biden isn’t hiding in a bunker, but he’s winning this campaign. Of course Democrats are okay with that.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

20 thoughts on “Biden Doesn’t Have a Bunker Strategy, But He Is Winning the Campaign”

  1. Biden’s old enough to remember Teddy White’s “Making of the President, 1964”, in which White attributed to Napoleon the maxim, “Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”

    It worked out pretty well for LBJ.

  2. No. It is not always the right thing to head to the bunker when the security details tells you to. Sometimes the best leadership option is to lead from the front even if it’s risky.

    Anyhow whenever I see Biden’s adds I absolutely cringe. All I can think is “this guy is so old can he even make it to the end of the term?” His voice is so quavery, he stumbles over a word here and there. Maybe these are common things but these are advertisements. They used the best takes. What wasn’t used? There is no doubt in my mind he is too old to be president. But with all that he is still easily better than Donald Trump.

    1. Ya, I agree.

      The WH is quite literally the most secure building in the US. This was not an attack from a plummeting airliner, it was a bunch of protesters. It’s impossible to get through that front door without serious military hardware. I bet a bazooka would bounce right off.

      And ‘Biden is hiding in his basement’ does not have quite the sting they think, considering that right now many people have their kids living in their basement because they had to come home.

    2. I am not sure he can make it to election day. I pray he does or we may be stuck with the Orange Jerk for another four years., The national polls have him way ahead but not so much on the battleground states. So I have stopped listening to national polls.

  3. It ought to be obvious that one thing voters would seek during the peak of Trump Exhaustion is a politician who isn’t in their face every single day. It reminds me of the 1920 election but with the parties reversed.

  4. A thing that bothers me about the polls that have Biden “way ahead” of Trump is that only a handful of them have him clearing 50%, and I haven’t seen one breaking the line. People may hate Trump but they don’t seem to like Biden at all. However it comes out in the wash, there’s a huge enthusiasm deficit here.

      1. At the time I posted this I hadn’t looked at all the polls exhaustively, but rather had just been following the headlines as new major polls were released, and up to that point there were only two I saw that had him at exactly 50%, and not a one higher. I’m not a fan of 538 these days, but if you look at RCP’s poll reporting from today https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/pres_general/ you can see a handful of outliers going as high as 56 or 57%, but the vast majority are 49% and below. It’s not even close.

    1. There is enthusiasm for Biden, driven by Biden of course, as a much needed alternative to four more years of Trump, which a solid majority does not want. But a large part of the enthusiasm of that pro Biden majority, is anti-Trump. Polls are showing solid majorities across the board for Biden, since a vote for Biden is a vote against Trump.

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