Biden positions himself for the general election

It would be hard for me to be disappointed in a Biden Administration. Because my expectations are so low.

But I would still like to see him get elected. With a pandemic and a depression going on, it should be a good year for a challenger. I do think he will have to have a stronger theme than Make America Boring Again. His video with Sanders was decent. Even his fake surprise when Sanders said he was endorsing him was kind of charmingly dorky. And his Morning Zoo appearance this week was also good, as far as it went. Although it was about as softball as an interview gets. Joe Biden: People are fightened and looking for leadership MSNBC 04/16/2020:

Joe Scarborough's opening question:

"I want to ask you, Mr. Vice President, to talk to the people who are hurting and suffering right now. Willy, Mika, and I were talking earlier, what a shame it is now in the middle of a pandemic where ovr 30,000 people have died, hubndreds of thousands have been impacted and are suffering right now either by this disease or being out of work, they don't have a national leader that can express empathy. Could you talk to them as a man who's endured loss and tell them what's on your mind right now and how you understand what they're going through?"

Biden did fine in those situations. But facing off against Trump and the Republicans and with a (yes) corporate media who see Trump's antics and insults and pseudoscandals and conspiracy theories as good for profits, Biden's not going to be able to get by with softball interviews for the whole campaign. Although the shelter-in-place environment is probably advantageous for him, because his staff can put up things on the teleprompter during the interviews.

Biden's presentation style has definitely slipped, and noticeably so. I know that the campaign's position is that this is a flaring up of a childhood stutter that nobody seems to have heard of before a couple of weeks ago and that it's naughty to mention it. But we can be sure that Trump will call lots of attention to it. The fact that Trump himself struggles to form grammatically intelligible sentences may offset that. But I can't believe it helps Biden to come off discombobulated. Because I doubt that people hear that as charming dorkiness.

Biden touched on a couple of things in the Morning Zoo segment that would make sense for him to hammer on right now: Trump is failing on the COVID-19 testing and individuals are getting peanuts in relief while corporations and real estate moguls like the Trump family get truckloads of public money that they can pretty much spend however they want. But then he buries the points in typical Democratic stump-speech laundry lists of we're gonna do this, and we should do that, and here are vague acknowledgments of various target voter groups.

This is a brand-new Biden ad that I guess is aimed at Democrats, and it does start off with a mention of testing. Responsibility 04/16/2020:

But the ad itself otherwise just shows Trump talking, without a specific mention of testing, and speaking in complete sentences. The tagline at the end is “Takes no responsibility. Claims total authority. The Trump Presidency.” Which is a much more amorphous message than, ”Trump is failing on coronavirus testing. Trump is screwing up on coronavirus testing. Trump is a disastrous failure on coronavirus testing.“