Republicans keep hoping and expecting that former vice president Joe Biden will have to leave his basement and hit the campaign trail sometime soon. Don’t be surprised, though, if that doesn’t happen. Biden looks to be trying to run a 21st-century version of the standard 19th-century “front porch campaign” - and it might work. Presidential candidates rarely actively campaigned in the 19th century. The lack of a national railroad system made travel too arduous for candidates before 1850. Even after that, it took days for trains to travel between major cities, and the lack of any means of mass communication...