Despite a series of smashing victories in the Democratic primaries, former Vice President Joe Biden is struggling to move forward.
After crushing Bernie Sanders in Florida, Illinois and Arizona to become the de facto Democratic nominee for president, Biden never took the stage amid a sea of victory signs or before an adoring crowd on national television.
He was instead stuck in a makeshift studio in his Delaware home, webcasting his remarks with a low-quality personal computer camera against a straight-out-of-YouTube black backdrop and two American flags. He warned about the coronavirus contagion. He offered an olive branch to Bernie Sanders. Then, despite two consecutive weeks of smashing victories, he all but disappeared from the news cycle for days.
The moment was a perfect distillation of Biden’s current predicament — in a state of suspended political animation, trapped between a rival who refuses to quit and the global pandemic that has all but shut down the Democratic primary campaign.
And as new polling suggests that Trump’s approval for responding to the virus is improving, some of Biden’s fellow Democrats worry he’s paralyzed himself.
“Biden is only in limbo if he keeps himself there. He’s only in a predicament to the degree he chooses to view himself in one,” said Jeff Hauser, a veteran of progressive politics who is head of the Revolving Door Project, which watchdogs executive branch appointees.
“Joe Biden can either complain about the fact that he is not getting significant media coverage or he could do something to change that,” Hauser said. “He needs to offer an alternative and offer a running play-by-play critique of the failings of this administration.”
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