As President Trump’s campaign barrels ahead with crowded rallies and in-person door-knocking, some Democratic officials in battleground states are warning that Joe Biden may not be doing enough to excite voters.

1. Does Biden Need a Higher Gear?
Some Democrats Think So
As President Trump’s campaign barrels ahead with crowded rallies and in-
person door-knocking, some Democratic officials in battleground states are
warning that Joe Biden may not be doing enough to excite voters.
While the Trump campaign claims it is knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors a day, the
Biden team is largely contacting voters through phone calls, text messaging programs and other
digital outreach. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
By Sydney Ember, Katie Glueck and Thomas Kaplan
 Sept. 17, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
In July, as the coronavirus pandemic raged, Joseph R. Biden Jr. made one trip
to a battleground state. In August, he again visited just one swing state. And on
the second weekend in September, less than eight weeks before Election Day,
Mr. Biden’s only activity was going to church near his Delaware home.

2. Mr. Biden’s restraint has spilled over into his campaign operation, which was
late to appoint top leaders in key states and embraced a far more cautious
approach to in-person engagement than President Trump, and even some other
Democratic candidates. While the Trump campaign claims it is knocking on
hundreds of thousands of doors a day, the Biden team is relying heavily on TV
ads and contacting voters largely through phone calls, text messaging programs
and other digital outreach.
That guarded strategy reflects the bet Mr. Biden’s campaign has made for
months: that American voters will reward a sober, responsible approach that
mirrors the ways the pandemic has upended their own lives, and follows
scientific guidance that Mr. Trump almost gleefully flouts.
Yet as Mr. Trump barrels ahead with crowded, risky rallies, some Democrats in
battleground states are growing increasingly anxious about the trade-offs Mr.
Biden has made. With some polls tightening since the beginning of the summer,
they are warning him that virtual events may not be enough to excite voters, and
urging him to intensify in-person outreach.
The concern among these Democrats is whether, in closely fought states that
may be won on the margins, the Biden campaign is engaging every possible
voter with an affirmative case for his candidacy, when the other side simply has
more traditional tactics they are willing to use.
“It feels like asymmetric warfare,” said Matt Munsey, the Democratic chair in
Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania, one of the counties Mr. Trump
narrowly flipped in 2016, referring to Mr. Biden’s approach versus Mr. Trump’s.
Livestreamed events were “not necessarily reaching people,” Mr. Munsey
cautioned. Mr. Biden has begun to accelerate the pace of his travel, and Mr.
Munsey praised him for “getting out there more.” But he expressed frustration
that Mr. Biden’s in-person events were kept so small: The campaign has been so
wary about exceeding crowd limits, he said, that local leaders have complained
of not being invited.

3. Image
Mr. Biden met with steelworkers in Detroit last week. Democrats have no
interest in replicating Mr. Trump’s rallies.Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York
Times
Compounding the challenge is an on-the-ground operation that was weak
during the primary season and was slow to scale up in the general election.
Strapped for cash after the primaries and uncertain about how to campaign
amid a national lockdown, the Biden team initially refrained from greatly
expanding its staff. It entered the summer without state directors in critical
battlegrounds like Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, and efforts to establish
local operations stretched deep into the summer.
Now Democrats from Florida to Nevada have worried that the team is behind
where it should be in engaging some core constituencies, a problem that may
also have implications for new voter registrations.
In Erie County, Pa., for instance, local party leaders have been imploring the
Biden campaign to have more of a presence on the ground. They became so
impatient to begin interacting directly with voters that they took it upon
themselves to go from house to house to distribute campaign signs, drop
literature and speak with people at a pandemic-acceptable distance.
Only recently has the campaign begun to rev up its field program in the Erie
area and across the state, local officials said.
“If you complain as much as I do and you beat on the doors of the national
campaign, they’re eventually going to respond to you,” said Ryan Bizzarro, a
state representative from the county, a onetime Democratic stronghold that Mr.
Trump flipped in 2016.

4. Beyond the risk of leaving voters feeling overlooked, Mr. Biden’s limited travel
schedule provided ammunition to Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly mocked him
for rarely straying from his Delaware home. “You need a lot of energy to do this
job properly,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign event in Phoenix on Monday,
adding that “you can’t be sitting in your basement for four days.”
Democrats have no interest in replicating Mr. Trump’s rallies, which pose health
risks and also turn off voters who are alarmed by the dangers of Covid-19. Mr.
Biden has been eager to make the race a referendum on Mr. Trump and his
stewardship of the pandemic, a game plan that polls generally suggest is
working, including with traditionally Republican-leaning constituencies like
seniors.
Now flush with cash, the Biden team is active on the airwaves, and on
Wednesday announced it would spend more than $65 million on paid
advertising in battleground states this week.
Asked if Mr. Biden has been visible enough in Hillsborough County — home to
Tampa, Fla., where he traveled on Tuesday — Ione Townsend, the Democratic
chair there, replied, “No.”
“But I also don’t want him to have the kind of events that Trump is having,
because I think those are superspreader events,” she said ahead of his trip. “In
these last few weeks he needs to do more of that kind of stuff that he’s now
doing.”
Image
A crowd gathered to see Mr. Biden outside a small event in Wauwatosa, Wis., after he
visited Kenosha in the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. It was his only
visit to the state this year.Credit...Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

5. In early May, Mr. Biden also held an event focused on a Tampa audience — a
virtual rally riddled with technical glitches. The campaign soon moved away
from such efforts in favor of a series of policy rollout speeches as well as online
activities, and Mr. Biden devoted considerable time to receiving briefings on the
virus and the economy.
“Joe Biden is working to earn every vote with a groundbreaking campaign that
meets this moment,” said Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman. “And
he’s doing it in the way he would govern: by putting the well-being of the
American families he’d fight for every day in office first.”