| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. People have plenty of things to worry about these days and lots of news to read. One thing you can safely skip? Criticism of how former Vice President Joe Biden is handling his role as not-quite-presumptive Democratic nominee. Here's Nate Silver: "Almost nothing about what Joe Biden is doing for the next few weeks is gonna matter much for November. And almost everything about what Donald Trump is doing is going to matter a lot." Yes. And it's not just Biden, and not just this election. The main job of the out-party challenger between sewing up the nomination and, say, mid-summer of an election year is to mend fences within the party and convert his or her campaign organization from a nomination footing to a general-election one. Falling short on those tasks can cause problems down the line. But the public side of campaigning? It's too early for the nominee to do all that much to energize supporters — and it's way too early for swing voters to start paying attention. Under the current circumstances, public campaigning will matter even less than usual. Biden can't win the fight for attention during a pandemic. There's no harm in maintaining a public presence and trying to demonstrate that he's thoughtful about policy or good at showing empathy. But it just doesn't matter much if anyone thinks he's doing it well, because everyone has a lot of stuff to think about before they get to the out-party nominee. The truth is that most people dramatically overestimate the electoral importance of candidates in general, and of challengers to an incumbent president in particular. The 2020 election will be determined overwhelmingly by feelings about President Donald Trump, pro and con. It's hard to see that because we're strongly biased toward believing that losers lose and winners win — so we tend to think that Mitt Romney, John Kerry, Bob Dole and Walter Mondale were terrible candidates who ran lousy campaigns, while Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were gifted politicians who ran brilliant ones. In reality, the main difference between those two group is that the first faced popular presidents while Clinton and Reagan defeated unpopular ones. Winning a presidential nomination almost always requires significant skill. Winning a general election? Skills can help on the margin, but not much. Especially for a challenger when the president is running for re-election. Normally, nominating conventions would signal to partisans that the campaign is coming and remind voters of why they liked the party in the first place. But at this point, the only people likely to be paying much attention to Biden (outside of the media) are his strongest supporters. There's nothing wrong with reminding strong supporters of what they like about a candidate. And, again, it's not as if there's any penalty for Biden going through the exercise of speaking on the topics of the day, giving his views and criticizing his opponent. Just don't expect much of it, or feel obligated to pay any attention for now. 1. Ryan Lloyd and Amy Erica Smith at Mischiefs of Faction on the coronavirus in Brazil. 2. Tom Pepinsky on partisan reactions to the pandemic. 3. Michael Tesler at the Monkey Cage on partisanship and fear of the coronavirus. 4. Scott Gottlieb and his colleagues on how to reopen the nation. 5. Kevin Drum isn't convinced by the Gottlieb plan. 6. Nice Jamelle Bouie item on President Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address. 7. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Bill Dudley gives good marks to Congress and the Federal Reserve. 8. Grace Sparks on polling during a health emergency. 9. And Paul Kane and John Wagner with the play-by-play on how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the bipartisan leadership worked together to pass a relief package over one crank's objection with as little immediate danger to members of the House as possible. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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