As Joe Biden has regained his frontrunner status in recent weeks, he’s seemed a bit more focused. He’s still Biden, of course. But he hasn’t challenged anyone to a pushup contest recently, or called someone a “lying dog-faced pony soldier,” and he’s kept the digressions—hallmarks of his decades in public office—to a relative minimum.

That may not be by accident. As the Washington Post observed Monday evening, Biden has recently shortened his stump speech on the campaign trail, with addresses at stops over the weekend ranging from seven to about 15 minutes. The Biden campaign did not comment to the Post about the apparent shift, but it seems likely that the strategy is designed to limit the former vice president’s gaffes.

Biden’s opponents—Bernie Sanders in the primary, and potentially Donald Trump in the general—have seized on his blunders, with the president and his allies openly suggesting that the former vice president is losing it. “They’re going to put him in a home,” Trump said of “Sleepy Joe” at a recent rally, “and other people are going to be running the country.” Sanders hasn’t personally gone so far as to suggest Biden is in physical or cognitive decline, but some of his supporters and allies have implied as much. “Bernie has three public events just today in two different states, each speaking engagement extending for close to an hour,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir tweeted Saturday, in response to a short Biden appearance in St. Louis.

But while the shortened stump speeches might open him up to criticism that aides are hiding him away from voters, less time at the podium also means less time for Biden to commit verbal lapses that his rivals have used as grist for their attacks. He still hasn’t been error free—a slip-up in that short St. Louis speech in which he called on “O’Biden-Bama” Democrats to rally behind him made the rounds over the weekend—but he’s hewed closer to the advice of ally Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement helped him to victory in South Carolina. “Zero in on how to make this personalized, talk about their families, and talk in terms of peoples’ communities,” the congressman recalled telling Biden before the South Carolina primary.

Biden, who now leads the race and could make his nomination a virtual inevitability with a win in Michigan Tuesday, essentially seems to be playing it safe here, letting his many surrogates—including former primary rivals like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris—do most of the talking. He may still be forced out of his comfort zone; during a rally with Booker and Harris in Detroit on Monday, he was twice interrupted by protesters—and not just the “lunging vegans” wife Jill Biden and senior adviser Symone Sanders had to fight off the stage after his triumphant Super Tuesday. Protesters in Detroit hit Biden over trade and his plans to combat climate change that critics say don’t go far enough, calling attention to aspects of his record and agenda that progressives find lacking. Laying low might limit his mistakes—but it’s unclear if it will allow him to further expand his reach into that wing of the party, should he indeed become the nominee. And keeping out of the spotlight would likely only provide more fodder for Trump, who basks in attention and is quick to portray his rival as “sleepy.”

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