By every standard measurement, Joe Biden is sitting pretty atop the 2020 Democratic dogpile, leading his closest competition (Bernie Sanders) by double digits in recent polls. His popularity among Democrats is stratospheric, compared to more progressive rivals, and voters seem to think he has the best chance at beating Donald Trump in a general election. And yet, when it comes to less tangible metrics, such as Biden’s presence on the campaign trail, one begins to wonder if the top Democratic candidate isn’t hiding certain weaknesses. As CNN observes in a new story, Biden has held only 11 campaign events and nine fund-raisers since he entered the race over a month ago. Compare that to Beto O’Rourke, who held 12 campaign events in his first two days alone. As The Washington Post noted last week, Biden had no public events scheduled at all over the Memorial Day weekend, a holiday custom-made for political candidates to guzzle hot dogs and express their support for veterans. (His rivals made extensive use of the three-day weekend.)

So, what’s up with Joe? Allies say Biden doesn’t feel the same pressure to win news cycles and eyeballs—he’s the front-runner, after all, and it’s not clear that running himself ragged would make him even more of a front-runner. But, as some strategists posited to CNN, it’s also possible that Biden’s decision to rely on his name recognition, at least at this early stage of the campaign, is masking some thornier issues with his candidacy:

His campaign appears to have chosen a strategy of having voters “see him less and remember him more,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive Democratic strategist who is not affiliated with a 2020 campaign.

“And that means remembering him as Barack Obama's vice president and the goodwill that comes from that—and not necessarily Joe Biden the 2020 candidate, who is not as great a campaigner as some might remember.”

Right now, the vast majority of Democrats still harbor warm, fuzzy feelings about Obama’s No. 2, forgetting, perhaps, that Biden has a long and complicated record of his own that predates Obama’s by several decades. It’s also easy to forget, with Biden taking a light touch to campaigning, how liable he is to put his foot in his mouth. While everyone loves Biden, it’s not clear how deeply their affection runs. In a recent town-hall swing through New Hampshire, most of the potential voters who came out for Biden were older, as opposed to the young blood turning out for Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg events.

Could a general lack of excitement, a sense that Biden is the “safe” candidate, be a harbinger of a late-cycle upset? As Vanity Fair contributor Peter Hamby recently wrote, “every time a Democrat has won the presidency, it’s because Democrats voted with their hearts in a primary and closed ranks around the candidate who inspired them.” Biden, far from promising a break with the past, has based his entire candidacy on the promise of a restoration. When Democratic voters are less than enthused—as they were with Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and yes, Hillary Clinton—they tend to lose.

In surveys measuring the performance of a generic Democrat running against Trump, the generic Democrat wins every time. And what Democrat is more generic than Joe Biden? Still, it’s a somewhat dreary message to run on—and one that might foreshadow danger, with more than eight months remaining until the Iowa caucuses. Trump, who has a keen eye for the visual signifiers of popularity, has already seized on reports that Biden is drawing underwhelming crowds. “Look at the thousands and thousands of people we have,” he boasted during a recent Pennsylvania rally. “They said [Biden] had 600 people . . . I’d say 150.” (The Trump campaign did not release the number of people who attended his own rally.)

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