BIDEN!--BRINGING BACK BOREDOM:

It is hard to imagine a more conventional start to a presidential campaign than the one Joe Biden has put together. The 76-year-old kicked things off with a video in which he spoke directly to the camera about "what makes America, America." He followed that with a string of endorsements from establishment politicians and a big-ticket fundraising dinner with corporate lobbyists. He then sat down for his first extended interview Friday on the soft-focus set of The View. At his first rally Monday, at a union hall in Pittsburgh, he stepped on stage to the same Bruce Springsteen song used by Barack Obama for his 2012 reelection effort. The speech that followed was heavy on timeless stump filler--"When I travel this country and I meet people like all of you..."--and light on surprises.

Biden's strategy is so conventional that it can look boring, particularly for journalists like myself who have a professional bias toward things that are new and different, and it looks the same to an activist base trying to shake up the status quo. But Biden's uncreative approach looks like something else to those Democrats most desperate to defeat Donald Trump: comforting.

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