President Biden will end the 2024 race having done just one campaign event alongside his own vice president and chosen successor. Not since President George W. Bush and Senator McCain have party standard-bearers avoided each other to this extent. 

Mr. Biden and Vice President Harris have been noticeably separate since the president dropped his reelection bid in July. At the Democratic National Convention the following month, Mr. Biden delivered remarks to the delegates on Monday night and quickly jetted off to California for vacation. Typically, outgoing presidents address their party’s nominating convention on Wednesday night, though that honor went to President Obama this year.  

Just days after the DNC ended, Mr. Biden told reporters that he would be “on the road” for Ms. Harris for the rest of the campaign, and while he did appear at a rally with his vice president at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 2, he has stuck almost exclusively to his own events and his official activities as president. Those solo campaign events at small rallies and union halls look more like a congressional or gubernatorial campaign than it does an event with an incumbent president, however. 

On Monday, Mr. Biden has no campaign events on his schedule. Rather, the only thing on his public calendar is a series of calls with military officials who were involved in recent successful counterterrorism operations. As of Monday morning, the president’s schedule is blank for the rest of the week. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The president’s notable absence from the trail has most likely helped Ms. Harris distance herself from a deeply unpopular commander-in-chief, while still being able to claim credit for agenda items like a price cap on insulin and investments in roads, bridges, and the chip manufacturing industry. According to a New York Times–Siena College poll released on October 8, Ms. Harris’s attempts to distance herself from her boss were seemingly working, with 46 percent of voters saying Ms. Harris represents “change” while just 44 percent said the same of President Trump. 

Mr. Biden has done some small events to mobilize some critical voters in the final days of the presidential election, though some of those events have led to unexpected headlines that the Harris campaign would surely have wanted to avoid. During a small event at Scranton, Pennsylvania — Mr. Biden’s hometown — on Saturday, the president said today’s Republicans are “the kind of guys you want to smack in the ass.” During a video conference with the Hispanic activist group Voto Latino, Mr. Biden made his infamous “garbage” remark from which Ms. Harris later had to distance herself. 

Mr. Biden is the most absent sitting commander-in-chief from the campaign trail since Mr. Bush in 2008, when his approval rating tumbled below 30 percent and McCain had to stiff-arm him. By election eve in 2016, Mr. Obama had done dozens of rallies for Secretary Clinton, urging voters to get out and support her. Mr. Obama has seemingly taken on that role once again as the most popular figure in the party. In October alone, the former president and former first lady Michelle Obama have participated in 10 rallies for Ms. Harris, Governor Walz, and 

Even President Clinton has done more public campaign events for Ms. Harris than Mr. Biden. The 42nd president has done smaller rallies in North Carolina, Georgia, and western Pennsylvania, all while Mr. Biden is absent from the spotlight.