SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: A Bad Day for the Biden Campaign.

If only the Democratic nominee could have remained cosseted in friendly media’s comforting embrace until November, but there are voters beyond the base to reach. And as the Biden campaign has begun to emerge from its cocoon and engage with more adversarial reporters, the results suggest this campaign and its candidate are more flatfooted than their image-makers would have you believe.

The first sign of distress came from the Fox News Channel. On Thursday, Biden campaign national press secretary TJ Ducklo sat down with anchor Brett Baier to discuss policy and respond to the Trump campaign’s criticisms. But the dyspeptic performance Ducklo turned in suggests the Biden campaign has bathed in soft coverage for so long that its political muscles have atrophied.

If Ducklo conveyed anything to Fox’s audience throughout his seven-minute appearance, it was his intention to avoid answering questions—none of which were particularly difficult.

Related: NYT: Here’s how Biden might already be blowing the 2020 election.

And this brings us back to the point about 2016. Hillary Clinton had a huuuge money advantage and the good fortune of running against a candidate who was easy to personally dislike. She blew those advantages by running a national-messaging campaign rather than doing the retail politicking necessary to generate turnout. Even then, Clinton had at least some parity, as Trump also disdained that kind of GOTV effort, preferring to do rallies to stoke enthusiasm and then use targeted ads to replace the ground game.

This time around, though, Trump and the RNC are investing heavily in that kind of retail politicking, while Biden isn’t investing at all in a ground game. He’s doing nothing but national messaging and occasional bungee visits to places where polling indicates trouble — which is why he’s heading to Minnesota next week, a state he should easily be carrying. If Russonello is correct about Biden’s strength in the suburbs, this state shouldn’t even be on Biden’s limited radar — and yet he’s breaking his bubble to appear here instead of, say, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, or Arizona.

Russonello’s right that Biden and Democrats should worry. He just is a little off on how much they should worry, and why it matters — and not just in the presidential election.

And one last item on Ducklo’s train wreck interview: No, Biden Didn’t Support Trump’s China Travel Ban. Biden spox falsely claims Biden favored travel restrictions.