Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is taking extensive and extremely disciplined steps to protect the former vice president from a possible encounter with the coronavirus, Politico reported on Monday.
The reasons for this are twofold – to both protect the candidate, who at 77 is at an age that puts him at higher risk of serious complications from the coronavirus, and to emphasize the sharp contrast with President Donald Trump, who flouts his own administration’s health guidelines at the large, nonsocially distanced campaign events he has been holding nationwide.
“What we consistently hear from people is that they’re frustrated by how Trump has engaged over the summer - that he doesn’t follow public health guidelines while they’re not going to funerals and are sharing in the sacrifice for six, seven months now,” said Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield. “They're frustrated when they see Donald Trump behaving irresponsibly at a political event.”
However, what many consider to be Biden’s overly obsessive precautions have been criticized, including in his own party.
Terrance Warthen, former co-chair of the progressive group Our Wisconsin Revolution, said Biden overdid safety concerns when he moved his nominating speech to Wilmington, instead of Milwaukee, where the national convention was originally scheduled to take place.
Warthen said Biden should have given the speech in Milwaukee and then taken a safe bus trip and waved out the window, to at least show respect to the city and state.
Critics have also said press access to Biden’s events during his travel has been restricted to a small pool of reporters, which has allowed the campaign to control its message and candidate in ways that would be more difficult with a larger group of media.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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