Drowned out by pandemic, a muted victory for Joe Biden

Barack Obama celebrated the kickoff of his "historic" White House challenge before thousands of ecstatic supporters. Hillary Clinton also marked her "milestone," as the first woman nominee of a major US party, to thunderous applause.

And what of Joe Biden? The resurgent Democrat has been denied the climactic rollout that his predecessors enjoyed.

Like most Americans he is under stay-at-home orders due to coronavirus, and therefore marked becoming the party's de facto 2020 nominee this week with a press release and comments broadcast online from his basement.

Obama delivered the best of his soaring rhetoric in June 2008 in a passionate speech upon clinching the Democratic Party's nomination, a barrier-busting feat for a man who would become the nation's first black president.

He told a packed Minnesota arena that the moment marked "the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another." It was the launch pad for an unprecedented and victorious campaign, a "huge celebration," his former advisor Dan Pfeiffer recalled on a recent podcast.

Biden's conquering moment in the national spotlight has not materialized. Some 15 state primaries have been postponed, and there is no triumphant rally to send him off on his challenge against President Donald Trump.

An anxiety-provoking pandemic does not lend itself to campaign jubilees.

Biden, the 77-year-old former vice president, clinched victory in the Democratic primaries more swiftly than both Obama and Clinton, after his lone remaining rival Bernie Sanders quit the race on Wednesday.

That evening, with his gaze fixed on the camera and his library bookshelves as a backdrop in his home studio, Biden offered warm words to Sanders before quickly turning to voters' concerns about the pandemic during an internet livestream.

He has since taken to Twitter to discuss the crisis, called on Americans to help him defeat Trump on November 3, and put forward questions to the president ahead of his daily coronavirus task force briefings.

But Biden has struggled to crack through in the national media landscape.

"It's certainly a highly unusual time and it has meant that all campaigns are on mute," American University professor of government David Lublin told AFP Friday.

"You're competing not just with the president, but also with the international crisis of COVID-19" that is dominating American interest and headlines, he added. Biden's campaign "gets less attention."