I have been watching the polls, and Joe Biden is ahead in all of them. He is ahead in all of the battleground states, except North Carolina. Biden leads in Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Trump went berserk when CNN reported that Biden had a 14-point lead on June 5, and he assailed CNN reporters as fakes and frauds, etc. But then FOX News reported that Biden has a 12-point lead, and Trump was briefly silent.
Biden has taken a decisive lead without campaigning. My advice to him is that he should run what used to be called a “front-porch campaign.” That’s a campaign where the candidate basically stays home, sits on his front porch, and gives interviews.
This is not a good time for Biden to hold rallies, as Trump does, spreading the coronavirus wherever he goes.
Biden is doing just fine without going into crowds.
He should give an occasional speech, describing his policies and priorities.
And he should stay home.
Trump shoots himself in the foot on a daily basis. His dictatorial instincts are on display daily. His racism and megalomania will drive voter turnout.
Biden should spend his time planning an FDR-style recovery, priming the pump, reviving the public sector, figuring out a massive infrastructure program that puts people back to work, devising ways to extend medical insurance to the entire population, coming up with a creative plan to cancel billions of dollars of student debt that burdens millions of young people, and of course, honing plans to re-envision K-12 education with new investments in Title I, special education, and a rescue plan for schools that must meet the needs of children in the post-pandemic era with small classes and safe environments for teaching and learning. He must attend to rebuild the civil service and restore the departments and agencies that Trump has endeavored to destroy. And, of course, he must be ready immediately to repair our relationships with our allies, to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, and to reassure the other nations of the world that the Trump era was an aberration and it is over.
Stay home, Joe. You are doing just fine by presenting yourself to the American people as a man of intelligence, experience, judgment, wisdom, and a readiness to step into the job on day one and replace the nation’s most incompetent and corrupt administration in history.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for articulating something I’ve had a sense of for the past three months but haven’t been able to put into words. The fact that he won’t hold rallies that put people at unnecessary risk is in and of itself a great act of responsible leadership. And hey, it worked for virtually every elected president through William McKinley. Why shouldn’t it work now?
Good morning Diane and everyone,
Funny you should mention this. Last night over dinner, my husband and I had the exact conversation over how Biden should proceed in his campaign. We came to just about the same conclusion!
My husband and I also talk about VP picks. We both like Val Demings for VP. She’s from Florida and was a Chief of Police there. I think the Vice President role will change quite a bit. I think that person will be much more outspoken and take on more of a public role with her own interests and concerns.
Actually, the appearance is deceptive: Biden is campaigning. He’s been doing things (like meeting with George Floyd’s family and with BLM protestors) that advance the message that he cares and is involved in the issues that concern Americans. He’s getting on the airwaves with some solid ad work. But he’s also leading by example, staying out of large crowds and modeling proper pandemic behavior (and don’t think voters haven’t noticed, they have.) He knows exactly what kind of campaign he needs to run and he’s running it.
By the way, Diane, Biden is not behind in NC. The RCP average has him up by 1.4%, the 538 average has him up by 2.8% and has had Biden leading for months. Most of the recent, well rated polls have shown Biden with a lead, especially the Siena/NYT poll just out that has him up by 9% (and Siena is an A+ rated pollster.) This is indicative of where things are going on in NC right now, with the GOP on the ropes after a decade of having everything their own way. I fully expect that we’ll deliver NC to Biden come November.
I like the lower key campaign because I’m sick to death of these huge, billion dollar celebrity extravaganza political campaigns. They’re too long, too expensive and they do nothing for voters.
If Covid trims those monster campaigns- the excess, the obscene amounts of money- it will be the one good thing that came out of this catastrophe.
Kill the campaign industrial complex. Start over. Front porch sounds good to me.
YES!!!! Remember when people actually read the newspapers to find out about the candidates. Talked/discussed with neighbors and co-workers about the candidates. When “most” people made election choices based on what was good for the country as a whole. Now, it’s all about marketing, brand, and political party affiliation and forget about the taxpayers who pay for all this nonsense. Not going to miss the big dog and pony shows.
Yes!!! I generally hit the mute button on the TV during campaign season. I live in a conservative area, and the negative content of so many advertisements is annoying. We should give all the candidates the same amount of government money to run a campaign. It would reduce the number of billionaires and millionaires in “public service.”
I agree completely! I am incredibly worried about Biden’s many weaknesses. Let Trump just keep talking and acting the fool. A baked potato would look better by comparison.
LOL. Another ed reform interview of Jeb Bush:
https://www.educationnext.org/jeb-bush-my-view-schools-have-to-open-coronavirus-covid-19/
Ed reform plans for reopening schools deliberately and carefully exclude anyone who works in, attends, or supports any public school, anywhere.
They are “public education experts” who exclude 90% of schools, families and students but they’re great at generating 10 point plans for people who DO use public schools!
Brilliant, Diane. Yes, yes, yes. I hope they have the great good sense to adopt your description of the campaign. THIS is brilliant.
Thank you.
Did I say this is brilliant? LOL.
Brilliant.
Another reason why Diane Ravitch needs to be a high-level advisor to the Biden campaign.
I don’t have much faith that anyone in DC will do anything for public schools. I don’t think they particularly value our schools and that won’t change.
But Biden could do a lot by just hiring a couple of people outside the ed reform echo chamber. Our schools and students are not well served by ed reformers. They are lousy advocates for kids in public schools and there’s a reason for that- “success” to them means our schools no longer exist.
It just isn’t fair that no one works on behalf of 90% of students. They really can do better than that.
But children don’t vote…so they don’t really matter. Children are considered nothing more than chattel until they are dispatched into the industrial working complex to provide more tax dollars to support the free market ideals of the uber wealthy. Chattel should be taken care of by their owners….the thought of those pesky kids eating up all those tax dollars that could be used for Betsy Devos (and her ilk) to buy another yacht. And old people should just die so that Medicare and SS can go the wayside. We are living in a Libertarian nightmare…get out your boot straps! SMH!!!
It’s going to take some heavy lifting to undo the damage done by the Trump maladministration, in every agency and department, among all our partners around the world. And we shall have to see a lot of legislation to tie the hands of the 200 troglodytes Trump has put on the federal bench.
The abuse caused by this administration never ends. Now the Supreme Court is complicit.
Supreme Court permits fast-track removal of asylum seekers
The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a win on Thursday by ruling that asylum seekers have no right to a federal court hearing before being removed from the U.S.
The 7-2 decision allows the administration to fast-track the removal process, and could affect thousands of immigrants.
I think the front porch campaign makes great sense. I suggest at least several porch-talks in which Biden sits with other key figures (e.g. Pres. Obama, Susan Rice, Corey Booker, etc., etc) and “chats.” I think right now we need more chats and from-the-heart comments and less bomba’stic ‘big talks’ with standard talking points.’ Trump does enough of that nonsense, and I totally agree that the best stance now is to let trump-be-trump and continue making an absolute ass of himself. Around 30% of the electorate is drunk on his kool-aid, and I am pretty sure they will stick with him until the bitter end. Lonnie Rowell, Rio Rancho, New Mexico
FDR and his fireside chats….bring it back, Joe!
If Trump’s big rallies produce more coronavirus, even his base will know how dangerous he is.
Big rallies? I beg to differ. His rallies show his itsy-Betsy, teenie, weenie support.
He was afraid to come out of the copter
He was as depressed as he could be
He was afraid to come out of the chopper
He was afraid that somebody would see
One, two, three, four, tell the people what he saw
It was an itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie, polka-dot crowd of his meanies
That he saw for the first time today
An itsy, bitsy, teentie, weenie, crowd filling the seats just leanly,
So in Air Force One he wanted to stay
Two, three, four, stick around we’ll tell you more…
LeftCoastTeacher: I LOVED it. I haven’t thought of that song for at least 50-60 years. When I was in middle school my band teacher had us go on a hay ride to a place outside of Boise. We all rode in the back of trucks that were filled with hay. We’d sing that song.
Who has a hay ride today???
We need a new FDR now more than ever.
All we can do is wait and see …. and take to the streets if Mr. Biden governs like Presidents Clinton and Obama did.
I agree Biden should stay home for all the excellent reasons you mention.
But to me, the reason Biden should stay home is because right now, there are dozens of very powerful editors and journalists at the NYT and other so-called “liberal” media organizations who have been very upset about how “biased against Trump” they appear by reporting on COVID-19 and the protests against racist policing tactics.
Those powerful editors and journalists — in the interests of being “fair and balanced” — had spent the last 3 years writing stories to inform readers that Democrats who hated Trump and wanted to destroy him “accused” Trump of doing something that Trump and the Republicans denied.
Unfortunately, the events of spring 2020, COVID-19 and the protests against racist policing tactics, have been impossible to report using the media’s usual “he said, she said” tactics. They couldn’t figure out a way to report on the 120,000+ Americans who died as “Trump-hating Democrats reported that Americans are getting ill, Republicans deny it”. How can the so-called “liberal” media prove to the Fox News watchers that they are “fair balanced” if they don’t write stories that always give both sides equal weight, as if facts are just partisan opinions?
Since the media can’t prove their fair and balanced bonfires if they simply report on the facts of what is happening in our country, the only way for them to prove their “fair and balanced” bonafides is to give equal time to writing negative stories about Biden as they do writing stories that reflect negatively on Trump.
That means that any misstep that Biden make is going to be blown up and exaggerated into portraying him as a corrupt and dishonest or otherwise entirely unsuitable president. I suspect the NYT editors are right now desperate to give “equal time” to writing stories about how Biden is corrupt and dishonest as they have reporting on COVID-19 and the protests.
Because the so-called “liberal media” has internalized that because their coverage of the crises that are happening in this country reflects negatively on Trump, that mens that they are now obligated to give equal time to negative stories about Biden.
And that is pretty scary for our democracy. Because it doesn’t matter what Biden does when the media feels that its duty is to give Biden massively negative coverage that is equal to the entirety of the coverage of the pandemic and protests that reflectively negatively on Trump.
That’s being “fair and balanced” now. We live in an Orwellian society and I fear that Biden is in for a summer and fall of non-stop negative coverage so that the major media can compensate for how “unfairly” they treated Trump by reporting on COVID-19 and the protests.
Any misstep by Biden will be exaggerated for weeks if they can’t find more tiny missteps to replace it. Once he announces a VP pick, there will no doubt be endless negative stories to make up for how meanly the press treated Trump by reporting honestly about the pandemic.
Biden staying at home has made it hard for the journalists to write negative stories based on some “troubling news” about Biden that reporters can exaggerate into a major scandal that will compete with Trump’s response to the pandemic and policing protests.
I have no doubt that kind of “fair and balanced” reporting will happen no matter what, unfortunately.
We live in an Orwellian time when the media believes that if their factual reporting on the pandemic reflects negatively on Trump, they are then morally obligated to give equal time to writing negative stories about Biden in a way that makes Biden look just as bad as Trump. Then the media will pat itself on the back that they are being properly “fair and balanced”. And they have a lot of catching up to do to make up to Trump for all the mean stories they wrote about him as the pandemic raged. Even if Biden stepped down tomorrow, and the most perfect candidate replaced him as the democratic nominee, the media would still believe their moral obligation is to write just as many negative stories about that new candidate as their coverage of COVID-19 reflected negatively on Trump.
It’s going to be a very ugly summer and fall for the democrats. I hope they have their armor and shields on and are ready to fight back.
I agree with you, Diane. It could well be a winning approach.
This “front porch” political strategy is also often called “rope-a-dope,” after the boxing tactic that Mohammed Ali used in his 1974 championship boxing match against George Foreman. (See Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope-a-dope?wprov=sfti1 )
For those who don’t follow boxing, the basic strategy is this: one rests against the ropes on the outside edge of the boxing ring (hence the name). Let your opponent be the aggressor, coming after you, swinging, tiring himself out. Your job is to keep your hands up to your face, defending yourself. The opponent soon gets frustrated and angry, which will make him jump around even more. Eventually he will have thoroughly exhausted himself, while you remain reasonably rested. When ready, step into your opponent and knock him out.
It has worked both in boxing and in politics. As you note, it would be particularly appropriate now with Biden. He shouldn’t address large gatherings during the pandemic, he isn’t always the most articulate public speaker, and Donald Trump is certainly a big “dope.” He deserves to be knocked out of the ring in November.
This is a great comparison to “rope-a-dope”.
Ironically, it is usually the strategy used by an incumbent president seeking re-election, who usually just has to sit in the Oval Office demonstrating basic competency at his job. Even if things aren’t going particularly well, the incumbent just has to look reasonably competent and let his opponent hurt himself. That is especially easy to do when the incumbent president is a Republican and knows that the news media is desperate to exaggerate his opponent’s missteps into newsworthy scandals that prove that that Democrat is far less trustworthy than the incumbent Republican president.
A perfect example of this is the GW Bush – John Kerry election in 2004. An unpopular and dishonest incumbent president, but the “fair and balanced” media helped turn Kerry into someone even less trustworthy than Bush.
In Trump’s case, however, sitting in the Oval Office is a huge problem because he seems to be incapable of doing so without making serious problems even worse and looking even more dangerous to re-elect. So he will probably be out there and Biden should not take the bait that the media and right wing purveyors of propaganda want him to take.
In order for Trump to win, he needs to change the narrative from “these are the facts about the state of the nation today and these are the facts about what Trump has done and continues to do to address the serious crises we face” (those facts are what are hurting Trump) to “Biden is untrustworthy and a danger to the future of our country and is as bad if not worse than Trump.”
(FYI, if you notice any voices who claim to be Bernie voters who are purveyors of the “Biden is untrustworthy/dangerous/lying” rhetoric, you might understand why they are so adamant that everyone believe that about Biden rather than have voters remember all the facts about Trump and the horrible things his presidency caused.)
You are right that Trump will run on a platform of Biden is corrupt, a tool of radical socialists and other lies.
and…. Remember the BURMA SHAVE signs? Anyone on a road trip through rural areas will. Imagine a row of 10 road signs each grabbing you to read the next one – – – each one with a president’s lie, blunder, corrupt act, wealthy pals getting rich off campaign donation favors, pardoning crooks….
There are a few poets on this blog – start rhyming! I am sure someone will underwrite it.
And, “Three Billboards ….”
Someone has to unglue these folks from fox news interpretations of reality
Trump explains to Hannity what his goals are for the second term…pure gibberish.