Joe Biden's latest figures show just how badly his campaign strategy has backfired

The former VP should have got ahead of the news this week, but instead he allowed Trump to dominate the narrative while choosing to 'wait and see'

When the conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton would easily beat Donald Trump fell apart, the new conventional wisdom became: Joe Biden is the best person to prevent a second Trump term.

The problem for Biden is he has first to get the Democratic nomination, and his trajectory since announcing has weakened, particularly over the last several weeks.

Biden officially kicked off his 2020 campaign in April, and by early May, he was at 41.4 per cent among Democratic voters in the RealClear Politics polling average for the nomination. That was a nearly 30-point lead over Bernie Sanders at the time. All the other candidates were in single digits. Fast forward to October, and Biden is clinging to a 2-point lead over a surging Elizabeth Warren; he now only has 26 per cent among all the candidates.

Biden's polling strength lies in how well he's doing with African American voters. Warren struggled to gain traction with that critical demographic early on, but more recent polling shows she's beginning turn that around.

If it were only the polls, one could wave it off as a fluid metric that can shift at any time, but money often follows voter enthusiasm for candidates, and with 3rd quarter fundraising numbers out, there may well be trouble for Biden on that front as well.

The former VP hauled in $15 million, which is nothing to sneeze with so many candidates in the race. Unfortunately for Biden, it places him fourth among fellow Democratic candidates. Bernie Sanders brought in $25.3 million, Warren $24.6 million, and Pete Buttigieg raised $19.1 million. Even Kamala Harris, who saw the bottom drop out of her poll numbers in the last several months, raised $11.6 million.

As with polling, fundraising doesn't mean everything. Just ask Jeb Bush, who raised $114 million by July 2015 and never made it past South Carolina once the voting started for the 2016 GOP nomination. But the combination of weak poll numbers and less-than-stellar fundraising should have anyone on the Biden campaign nervous.

Biden has been good at avoiding the press. He hasn't appeared on any of the major Sunday political news shows. His campaign rally speeches stick to a familiar script, giving him fewer soundbites on television than his rivals. It's almost as if he's hoping to coast into Iowa in February 2020.

Biden and his team have also displayed a stunning lack of reaction to news cycles — they’ve been unable to capitalize on them and use them as fodder against his Democratic opponents, but, more importantly, they’ve also been unable to use news to their advantage when it comes to Donald Trump. While the focus has mainly been on Trump's suggestions to foreign powers to investigate Biden and his son Hunter in the last week, Joe Biden’s lack of strategy has meant that some Republican messaging has gotten through. As well as reporting on what the president is saying, the press has begun looking around at Hunter, his business dealings, and if he benefitted from his father's influence and position as a Senator and then Vice President. A better team wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. And Biden has to tread carefully, because Hunter's business dealings and ability to get appointed to corporate boards in business he's not familiar with is the kind of material Warren and Sanders will happily go after if they smell blood in the water.

Uncle Joe’s campaign appears to have the machinations of a shop that is far more reactive than proactive — similar to Hillary Clinton in 2016. With a field of candidates still able to raise tens of millions of dollars, they will stick around, and Biden must be ready.

Time is short for the Biden campaign. Fall is here, and winter is coming. With the drama of impeachment likely consuming most of the headlines for the foreseeable future, he and his campaign will have to stop getting caught flat-footed on issues, be out in front of news cycles, and not try to coast through the upcoming fall debates.

If Biden doesn't cement a lead going into the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, he may have to rely on South Carolina — not to solidify his march to the nomination, but to save it from expiring. The third-quarter fundraising effort should be a wake-up call. Time will tell if Biden is ready to answer.