No One Cares About Joe Biden Anymore

Buried under the mountain of headlines related to the coronavirus pandemic, technically there remains an active Democratic presidential primary. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the last candidate standing, in a challenge to the prohibitive nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden leads Sanders by three hundred delegates and over 2.3 million votes, but the public health crisis has put the freeze on campaigning, not just in the primary, but for the general election as well.

At the beginning of March, Joe Biden sailed to victory in most of the Super Tuesday states, with Sanders underperforming expectations. Similar results occurred on March 10. But not long after that the public and media’s attention turned to the coronavirus, which at that point was still under 1,000 positive cases in the United States. In just over two weeks, that has turned into over 85,000 cases.

After another walloping on March 17, it was expected that Sanders would drop out of the contest. That did not occur, however. Instead, he returned to Washington to help craft coronavirus-related relief legislation. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has remained in D.C. for the same reason, while Biden has sequestered himself in Delaware home, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii suspended her moribund campaign.

All three remaining campaigns have suspended rallies, traveling, and in-person events to protect both the candidates and their supporters from contracting the coronavirus.

With Sanders’ suspension appearing inevitable, Joe Biden has been left to piece together unified campaign energy while under practical house arrest. The candidate has been pitching his own coronavirus response, although it's increasingly similar to what the Trump administration is already enacting.

A new Gallup poll, taken between March 13 and March 22, gave President Trump a 60% approval rating related to his handling of the coronavirus epidemic. Vice President Mike Pence received 61% approval. According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling tracker, President Trump has a less than 50% disapproval rating for the first time since March 2017. This places Biden in the difficult position of challenging an incumbent and demarcating differences in their approaches, while not appearing to be unnecessarily tearing down a leader during a crisis.

Meanwhile, the former vice president continues to be hampered by questions about his mental capacity, and whether at the age of 78 he’s prepared to manage the Oval Office.

In the week following the March 15 one-on-one debate with Sanders and his victory on March 17, Biden made no media appearances or television interviews. Some observed questioned the reasoning behind this, considering the timing. After that hiatus, Biden performed multiple rounds of television interviews where at different times the candidate appeared to be confused or lose his train of thought mid-sentence.

It’s critical for Biden’s campaign going into the summer to recapture an appearance of capability if he is going to be able to challenge President Trump on the merits of his crisis response.

Hunter DeRensis is the senior reporter for the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter @HunterDeRensis.