Joe Biden’s first virtual city hall was an absolute technical nightmare

When I signed up at Joe Biden’s first-ever virtual city hall, I was greeted with an Illinois senator adjusting the angle of her webcam and another showing an adorable (but screaming) baby in a strangely intimate video call before the former vice president even appeared on the screen. What was initially an awkwardly silent video conference developed into a complete technical nightmare that led to Biden sounding like he was statically screaming on TV for the first few minutes of the event.

Friday night’s town hall shouldn’t even have taken place online. Earlier this week, the last two major Democratic primary candidates, Biden and Bernie Sanders, had to cancel some campaign events due to the coronavirus pandemic. State officials across the country began banning large gatherings, such as gatherings, for fear of spreading the disease. Still, rallies remain an important part of any presidential campaign, and Biden’s team tried to mitigate the threat by holding a public Zoom call for supporters to join and ask questions. Unfortunately the goal was completely missed.

The Zoom call was plagued with technical issues right from the start. First, it started more than three hours late. Once Biden started speaking, his staff had to restart his entire speech because there was no sound, causing his campaign logo to slowly disappear to indicate that they were redoing the address. When he started to read his prepared comments again, Biden’s audio was suddenly painful to hear and impossible to understand, at least until they replaced the microphone he was using with a smartphone.

After its opening address – no matter how unintelligible – the staff opened the call for questions. “Mr. Biden’s speech was distorted all the time,” said the first questioner before being cut off.

An employee replied, “We appreciate you going through our technical problems.” Then they quickly clicked on the next questioner. It was just a few seconds of dead air and another supporter who apparently was unable to muffle himself before City Hall got its first real question. Towards the end of the conversation, Biden started going offscreen while answering supporters. Once his staff cut off the camera feed completely because he walked so far out of the frame. “Am I on the camera?” Biden said once during the event.

The campaign staff also said the call would be visible on Facebook Live. That Facebook stream went up late and took about four minutes to get dark. Facebook viewers have taken note of the video and audio issues, saying, “Joe, you need a new tech team. They make you look bad … “

Biden’s first virtual city hall was a sad first sign for the future of digital campaigns, something that will become increasingly important as the presidential race heats up and the corona virus spreads across the country. As more and more of our lives go online in the coming weeks, political campaigns will have to come up with creative solutions to fill the gaps of personal events.

Hopefully the Biden campaign and others can get it together before November, or at least until the pandemic goes away.