Feeble or cautious? How will voters see Biden’s convention?
Democrats hinted they'd have a partially digital convention for months. But the official announcement this week heralds advantages for presumptive 2020 presidential nominee Joe Biden. At least according to his Republican critics.
The Democratic National Convention was once anticipated to attract in excess of 50,000 people to Milwaukee from Aug. 17-20. But amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the organizing committee rolled out its plan Wednesday for a more intimate affair.
Biden will still be coronated as the party's 2020 standard-bearer in Milwaukee. But in the smaller Wisconsin Center and without the pomp and circumstance that comes with thousands upon thousands of delegates, officials, guests, and media. Or the trimming of sideline soirees.
Delegates are now encouraged to stay at home. The number of available press credentials has been slashed. And the program's switched to a largely televised event "anchored" from Milwaukee. The party's also preparing for delegates to vote remotely, even on the presidential and vice presidential nominations, after changing its rules last month to provide for "maximum flexibility."
The result? A subdued convention to launch Biden's general election bid against President Trump.
In stark contrast, Trump pushed Republicans this month to pull most of their gathering from Charlotte, North Carolina, so his crowning moment could take place before a boisterous crowd in Jacksonville. Florida has fewer virus-related restrictions and a GOP governor as opposed to its Democratic-led northern cousin.
Tom Pauken, a former Texas Republican Party chair and Ronald Reagan administration aide, said the Democrats' decision to host an understated convention may have been about the novel coronavirus. The United States reported its highest single-day increase in cases Wednesday.
But it leaned into the Biden camp's strategy of protecting the two-term vice president from unscripted exchanges and interactions "to avoid any major opportunities to slip up" as well, Pauken told the Washington Examiner.
"He has the lead right now in the polls, and that's a result of an anti-Trump vote rather than a pro-Biden vote," he said. "Not having a lot of people at the convention is allowing the Biden campaign to control the convention to a greater extent."
For instance, Pauken said there was "more chance of controversy" if there were "a big, physical turnout of voters" who supported Biden's primary rival, Bernie Sanders.
The liberal faction of the party, fresh off victories in Tuesday's primaries, had already been asked not to cause trouble at the 2020 convention after creating an embarrassing spectacle for Hillary Clinton in 2016. A nondisparagement agreement was circulated among some Sanders delegates in May. The arrangement was drafted by Sanders's team after Biden let the Vermont senator hang onto his backers until the convention so that they could influence party policy.
Pauken added: "You have Biden, who people are not enthusiastic about, but who they are not as opposed to as the voters were opposed to Hillary Clinton in 2016. And you have Trump, who is much less popular than he was in 2016. So, the goal of the Democratic strategist is to keep Biden hidden away."
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