From The Front Porch

Joe Biden can't leave his house in Wilmington, Delaware while the nation is under lockdown because of the coronavirus, and he's thus confined to his basement TV studio putting out announcements that his detractors (including many Bernie bros, who literally hate him) have compared to a public-access show like "Wayne's World."  Trump's "disinjectant" manifesto has caused Trump himself to appear on TV less often, so Biden's problem isn't that serious right now.  But eventually, as the 2020 presidential campaign picks up steam, Biden is going to have to up his game, and there's still no indication that travel and economic restrictions are going to be eased even temporarily over the summer and early autumn before the second wave of the virus hits.  Biden's digital campaign is still a work in progress while Trump has been building up his for over three years.  So what's a Democratic presidential nominee who can expect nonstop ridicule from Trump and Fox News personalities supposed to do to reach the people?

How about, for 2020, a parlor trick from 1920?  How about a front-porch campaign?

In 1920, a year scarily like this one - a recession, a pandemic, a great deal of uncertainty - the Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, campaigned from his home in the small Ohio town of Marion while his Democratic opponent - the governor of Ohio, James M. Cox - toured the country.  As the country was just coming out of a Spanish-flu pandemic, this was a smart idea; Harding didn't have to risk getting sick, and he was much more comfortable greeting guests and supporters (who, I'm sure, were well-screened) coming to see him.

Joe Biden could do the same thing.  He could campaign outside his house and have people (and the media) come to see him in the flesh.  You wouldn't have a packed audience on his front yard like Harding, as shown above, was able to have, as the Spanish-flu pandemic was already easing by the fall of 1920.  Just bring enough people who could fit in front of Biden's house with six feet of space between them - and no masks, because you don't want the audience to look like a convention of gangsters.  Just figure out how to keep everyone six feet away from each other at all times.

The first front-porch campaign was actually waged in 1896 by another Ohio Republican, William McKinley, in response to his Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan's campaign tour.  (The idea of a presidential nominee going on a campaign tour was a novel idea back then.)  McKinley, who ultimately won the 1896 election, knew that Bryan was a much better orator than he was, and he had no interest in taking Bryan's bait and competing on Bryan's terms when he preferred not to engage in any language he considered too flowery and empty. "I might as well put up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete against some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan," McKinley said. "I have to think when I speak."  Harding, though, employed the front-porch strategy for more cynical reasons.  Once he was the 1920 Republican presidential nominee, Republican U.S. Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania offered the following advice to Harding's handlers: "Keep Warren at home.  Don't let him make any speeches.  If he goes out on a tour somebody's sure to ask him questions, and Warren's just the sort of damned fool who'll try to answer them."  Harding defeated Cox in a landslide.  

I am not cynically suggesting a front-porch campaign for Biden to save him from himself.  No matter what public stage you put Biden on, he's still liable to say something and not have it come out right.   That can't be changed.  But with a front-porch campaign, at least you literally get him out of the house.

And if Biden's house doesn't have a front porch, someone had best build one.

(Incidentally, James Cox's vice presidential running mate - a fellow you probably never heard of, Franklin D. Roosevelt - also toured the country in the 1920 campaign, knowing the Democratic ticket wouldn't win but knowing also that he, then 38 years old, could build up a lot of political capital for his own future. Roosevelt had overcome the Spanish flu a year earlier; he became infected with polio in 1921.  I'm no medical expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if the flu compromised his immune system and made him more susceptible to catching the polio virus.  As for Harding, who never caught the Spanish flu, he had heart trouble that the pressure of the Presidency exacerbated, leading to his death in office in 1923 at the age of 57.  None of this has anything to do with Biden; this is just a bit of historical context.)