Biden's smart to lay low, but he should pick his running mate now

• Joe Biden's "stay out of Trump's way while he destroys himself" strategy is smart, for now.
• Biden's drawn on a string of good luck despite running an uninspired campaign: The primary is over early without a prolonged Democratic civil war, and the Republican president is flailing with his disastrous coronavirus response.
• But Biden can't stay quiet forever. Picking a running mate now could give his campaign a blast of energy.
• This could be the strangest election season ever. And while VP picks usually don't matter much, for a lot of reasons, Biden's choice of running mate will matter a lot in the 2020 race.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
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Joe Biden's laying low while Donald Trump flails around stepping on rakes like Sideshow Bob, but the presumptive Democratic nominee can't stay quiet forever.

The "stay out of Trump's way while he destroys himself" strategy made Democrats nervous at the start of the lockdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, but there's a school of thought that this is a lowkey brilliant decision.

In a lot of ways, Biden continues to draw on a string of luck that took his left-for-dead campaign (yeah, I was wrong about that) from the despair of a New Hampshire drubbing to a series of electoral routs from which he never looked back.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren flamed out early, making it clear that the primary was going to be socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders versus the field of moderates. Pete Buttigieg couldn't capitalize on his Iowa win. Amy Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg were non-factors. When Biden's South Carolina firewall gave him a surprisingly high margin of victory, the rest of the moderates dropped out. With the moderate vote unified, Sanders didn't last long head-to-head against Biden.

And just like that, Biden got to avoid the prolonged bloodbath of a Democratic civil war that both Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 had to endure.

While Trump continues to mishandle a pandemic that has brought the once-robust economy to the brink of a depression, Biden can sit back and raise money and let the Super PACs do the dirty work of attacking Trump.

By not dogging the president at every turn, Biden gets to look like he's putting patriotism over politics. By not doing a lot of TV hits, he avoids overexposure and is less likely to put his foot in his mouth.

Biden can play rope-a-dope with the flailing Trump for most of the summer, then save his big swings for the last few months of the campaign — which is typically when most voters start paying attention in earnest, something that's even more likely in our current uncharted waters.

But there's something he can do in the near-term to give his now-successful but never inspiring campaign a blast of energy: pick his running mate now.

VP picks usually don't matter, but Biden's will

Why would Biden try to grab any headlines at all when Trump's approval rating just dropped six percentage points (the steepest one-month cratering of his administration)?

Because he can't disappear completely, and even when the hosts are cloyingly deferential, he still presents as an exhausted and uninspired candidate on TV.

More than ever, Biden's resting his campaign on the mantra: I'm not Trump. But that strategy failed Hillary Clinton in 2016.

And to unseat an incumbent president, Democratic voters need to be motivated to vote if they hope to beat even a substantially weakened Trump.

Biden has admitted he probably wouldn't be running at all if not for the current White House occupant. There have been reports, which he's since denied, that he only plans to serve one term if elected. That's not likely to inspire passion.

Biden's already committed to selecting a woman as his running mate. And given the fact that Biden is 77, this woman will almost certainly be younger than him.

If he makes his choice soon, his campaign would be endowed with a surrogate that can offer a more energetic presence during the always-awkward lockdown TV interviews.

And should social distancing restrictions be relaxed to the point that smaller and more sparsely attended campaign events can be held, this running mate could hit the stops that might be too risky for Biden, who is squarely in the high-risk category for COVID-19.

Sure, choosing a running mate now gives Trump a target he can attack for months on end, which he surely would not only because it's his nature, but because he'd use anything at his disposal to distract from his catastrophic response to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, Biden's running mate could spend this time laying the groundwork with the Democratic base and skeptical Sanders supporters, assuaging their concerns that the former vice president is a relic of the past and more interested in compromise than in pushing for a more progressive agenda.

Should this potential running mate be a member of Congress or a governor, they could demonstrate to voters why their comportment in a time of crisis makes them "presidential" material.

This could be the strangest election season ever

For a lot of reasons, this could shape up to be one of the strangest presidential elections of all time.

We don't know what stage of the crisis we'll be in come November. We don't know which states will allow or expand mail-in voting, and which will insist on making voters risk their health to cast ballots.

With turnout this unassured, it's possible that certain deep-blue and deep-red states could get a little more purple.

Most often, the prolonged agonizing over the "right" VP pick is unnecessary. They usually don't help much, and Sarah Palin aside, they usually don't hurt a campaign all that much.

Biden's age and lack of any reason for running other than being "not Trump," could change that metric in 2020. His running mate will likely matter more than they typically would.

If Trump's performance as a chief executive continues to turn off American voters, it's possible that any natural born US citizen over the age of 35 could beat him in November.

But no one can take that for granted, and Biden shouldn't either.

Picking the right vice presidential candidate, and soon, could give Biden's campaign a boost of inspiration it has been lacking.

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