What Joe Biden’s Event Was Like
As one candidate plays to a nearly empty room, another prepares for a rally with health risks.
DARBY, Pa. — In 2020, presidential campaigning is either chaos or quiet.
Over the course of my career covering politics, I have attended hundreds of presidential campaign events.
I’ve never been to one anything like Joe Biden’s economic address in the Philadelphia suburbs today.
There was no soundtrack of carefully selected, inoffensive pop music blasting in the background. No reporters fighting over power outlets and positioning. No rope line for the candidate to walk, shaking hands and snapping selfies.
Oh, and hardly any voters.
About 20 handpicked local officials, small-business owners and reporters sat in folding chairs, each placed within a large white circle taped on the floor of a recreation center to maintain — or at least encourage — social distancing. A few attendees whispered to each other as photographers quietly chatted. You could hear the clack of typing echoing across the room. The silence was striking.
Nearly everyone wore masks. Before entering, a
Biden campaign worker took our temperatures and asked if we had shown any symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“We are going to get started in just a minute,” a staff member announced. “Today’s event has been set up to adhere to social distancing guidelines.”
Then, Mr. Biden appeared. He arrived with such little fanfare that I didn’t even notice him enter the room. There was no introduction by an organizer to pump up a crowd that wasn’t there, as is typical with campaign events.He just stood behind a lectern, pasted with the placard “Reopen Right: Safer and Stronger,” and began reading a speech off the teleprompters, assailing President Trump.
“Donald Trump’s failure to fight the coronavirus with the same focus that he uses to troll his enemies on Twitter has cost us lives and is putting hope for an economic recovery at risk,” he said. “Just like he couldn’t wish Covid away in March, just like he couldn’t tweet it away in April, he can’t ignore it away in June.”
Hundreds of miles to the west, local officials were preparing for a very different kind of campaign event.
On Monday, Mr. Trump bragged that
almost one million people had requested tickets to his rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday. The venue there holds slightly more than 19,000. Mr. Trump says an additional 40,000 would watch from screens set up at the city’s convention center.
Tulsa officials, however, have warned that the rally could help spread the coronavirus (more on that below). “Let me be clear, anyone planning to attend a large-scale gathering will face an increased risk of contracting Covid-19,” said Bruce Dart, the city’s top health official.
Mr. Biden had some thoughts on Mr. Trump’s rally, saying that the president is putting people’s health at risk and pointing out that the campaign is requiring attendees to
waive their right to sue if they get sick.
Mr. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, has been attacking Mr. Biden for keeping a light schedule.
“This is obviously a tactic to help him avoid errors and embarrassing, lost trains of thought, while also conveniently preventing the press corps from asking him any questions in person,” said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman.
Both camps are convinced of the correctness of their approach. Mr. Trump believes his path to victory runs through his base, a group more skeptical of the dangers of the virus. Even as
his polling numbers have sunk, he has pledged that the country will not close again if cases of the virus spike. Vice President Mike Pence
has told Americans that there will be no second wave, ignoring states where cases are surging now.
Mr. Biden believes he can win by following public health guidelines, respecting science and providing the kind of stability many Americans are craving after the chaos of the Trump administration.
“Folks, this is the truth. The pandemic is still here. It’s going to be here for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Biden said today. “Covid-19 is a fact of nature. We have to deal with this virus and everything that comes with it.”
Presidential campaigns are always about different visions for the country: the best way to grow the economy, or manage our adversaries, or tackle health care, or slow climate change — issues the country has grappled with for decades.
That’s not exactly the case in 2020. In this campaign, Americans are choosing between alternate realities.