Politico: 'Biden Is Hardly a Shut-in' Despite All His Lid Days

Politico sounds very worried while simultaneously trying to project not very convincingly that there is no real need for concern over the fact that for the first 26 days of September, Joe Biden has taken 11 "lid" days, i.e. done no campaigning. It is almost as if they are trying to convince themselves of this as much as they are their readers in Friday's worry bead article by Christopher Cadelago and Marc Caputo, "When Biden calls a 'lid,' Democrats wet the bed — and Trump starts mocking." Judging from the tenor of the article, perhaps the authors themselves could be placed in the "wet the bed" category. If calling a “lid" enters the mainstream American lexicon, this will be the week it all started. Joe Biden called a lid — the arcane term reporters use when a politician is done traveling for the day — at 1:02 p.m. Friday; 9:20 a.m. Thursday; 9:22 a.m. Tuesday and 8:34 a.m. Saturday. Biden's early turn-ins provoked the Twitter set, professionally nervous Democrats (OK, bedwetters) and, notably, Donald Trump to scratch their heads or rain down ridicule. Well, it is hard not to laugh at the idea of a candidate who is supposedly running in the most important election of our lifetime to be taking off almost half the time available to do nothing in the way of campaigning via "lid" days. To hear the Biden campaign tell it, his travel schedule doesn’t matter. Aides say the criticism leveled by Trump concerning Biden’s events and his calling “lids” is more interesting to restive or bored social media addicts than to the public at large. Yup! Hillary Clinton's lack of campaigning in Wisconsin sure worked out swell for her in Wisconsin in 2016. A top Democratic pollster agreed with Biden’s campaign, but with a more brutal assessment of the candidate. The person pointed to his penchant for gaffes and rambling stories as part of the strategy for keeping Biden bottled up. “The fact is a cardboard cutout could beat Trump. But Biden could lose to him,” the pollster said. “There’s no win in Biden being out on the trail the way Trump wants. The Biden campaign has been smart about that.” Is this a polite way of saying that it is better to keep Biden on ice rather than out on the campaign trail making a fool of himself? Biden is hardly a shut-in. He called a lid at 9:03 p.m. Wednesday; 10:23 p.m. Monday and 10:09 p.m. last Friday, after swings through North Carolina, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The former vice president finished at 3:40 p.m. Sunday, after appearing in Philadelphia for a speech on the death of Ginsburg and the future of the Supreme Court. Hardly a shut-in...who keeps calling the lids that you immediately listed. Politico concludes with a wish that taking all those days off the campaign trail won't hurt Biden because of a belief in the same polls that were wrong in 2016. Oh, and the Orange Man Bad shtick as well. In the end, they’re hoping the polls are right in nearly every battleground state and that antipathy for Trump is so strong it inspires enough turnout to compensate for the relative lack of enthusiasm Biden’s base might have for its candidate. Just sprinkle Pixie Dust over this campaign season and pray it is enough to miracle Joe Biden into a victory without having to really campaign at all.

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