So Joe Biden has selected a running mate. Now what?
No, no, you didn’t glance away from the internet for a minute and miss the big news. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, has not yet announced his choice of vice presidential nominee. We have probably another week of guessing. Followed by a couple weeks of obsessive media parsing of the meaning of Biden’s pick—and if Biden anoints a woman who is not a person of color, the chatter and analysis will be louder and last longer, with Black activists and strategists and voters expressing disappointment and doubts about turnout from a key Democratic bloc. Regardless of whomever Biden selects, though, there will remain slightly more than two months before Election Day. Maybe Biden’s current lead in the polls stays steady, and he cruises to a crushing defeat of President Donald Trump. This being 2020, probably not. Biden’s V.P. pick matters; what his campaign does with the time after the big reveal matters far more—and the internal tension over whether to play it safe or go on the offensive will start to show.
Right now Biden’s fundamental campaign blocking and tackling is going well: He is raising copious amounts of money and spending it aggressively, with $280 million being newly devoted to TV and digital ads. Tech experts and lawyers are being brought on board in anticipation of hacking mischief and fierce legal battles over vote counts. Larger questions about tone and tactics are still being sorted out, however, with some in the Biden camp prioritizing the avoidance of mistakes. Staying home in Delaware instead of attending the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee is a win for the caution wing. The next high-stakes moments will come when Biden faces off with Trump on the debate stage. “All Joe has to do is to do okay,” says Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor and longtime Biden insider. “He has to prove he’s solid, credible, makes sense, and can go a full debate without making a major gaffe. His recent speech on economic development, he didn’t miss a beat. He’s gotten stronger as he’s gone on.”
Minimizing risk down the stretch, and not rolling in the mud with his Republican opponent, should be somewhat easier because Biden will have so many anti-Trump groups willing to throw punches on his behalf. “Right now they’re sitting on a pretty good lead against a guy with a 50-hard negative,” says John Weaver, the former top strategist to John McCain who is now a leader of the Lincoln Project, which has been clever and relentless in making ads that get under Trump’s skin, and will be running an extensive early-voting drive. “I personally would be geographically more aggressive in states where they have a shot at beating Trump. I’m not sure they should be more aggressive in their engagement of Trump directly, given that we and Priorities USA and others are doing that. The odds are looking good, and Trump is fucking insane, but you need to keep the pressure on.”
Democrats have, to this point, shown remarkable discipline in uniting behind Biden. Staying away from Milwaukee could prove a savvy move in maintaining that peace, or at least the perception of peace—any nasty floor fight about party rules conducted over Zoom will get a whole lot less attention than the Clinton–Sanders battles in Philadelphia in 2016. Biden has already been unusual in moving left since winning the primaries, rather than the traditional pre-general-election tack to the center. One vehicle was a task force that brought in Bernie Sanders backers to hash out policy ideas.