The former vice president was staid and somber, even as his remarks were marred by a few minor real-time snafus and slip-ups. The lighting in his newly converted home studio was subpar. The webcast time, 10:30 a.m., came an hour earlier than Biden had originally said the day before — ensuring a relatively small audience for a candidate who hadn’t shown his face in nearly a week.

It wasn’t riveting TV. And the speech barely made a blip.

“The problem is Joe Biden doesn’t have a bully pulpit,” said George Arzt, a veteran Democratic consultant who has counted Cuomo among his clients.

Without the trappings of office, Biden has faded from the national stage as the coronavirus contagion chews through news cycle after news cycle. And without the actual authority that accompanies public office, he can’t make dramatic moves to muster the power of the government to make sweeping decisions that impact millions. It’s left him straining to remain relevant amid President Trump’s daily briefings — carried live on cable television each afternoon.

Add in the national media’s inherent geographical bias for its home base of New York -- where Cuomo and even New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have occupied oversized roles in national coverage — and it’s left Biden struggling to break through.

“For Biden, the other difficulty is wedging himself into that,” Arzt said. “And you can’t easily wedge yourself into a crisis situation, other than say what you would do as president or say the president isn’t doing enough. But he could look very political.”

Trump’s campaign has accused Biden of just that, as well as undermining the president, who has gained ground in the polls since he started daily White House press briefings. But Biden campaign advisers reject the criticism, saying that Trump’s press conferences do more harm than good to the president, and the country.

Biden lauded Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, who has won plaudits for his steady-as-she-goes leadership and serving as a foil to a sometimes erratic Trump.

“New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s briefings are a lesson in leadership,” Biden said Monday. “Republicans and Democrats all are rising to the moment, putting aside politics to do what has to be done. But they’re looking to the federal government for more help.”

Cuomo was one of seven governors Biden singled out for praise, attempting to put a bipartisan sheen on his remarks by including three Republicans. Yet even there, he had a minor stumble, mistakenly calling Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker “Charlie Parker.”

Few who watched Biden’s briefing saw it as equivalent counter-programming to Monday’s White House briefing, which featured the president, Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr, and White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, among others. Most other times, that briefing has featured Anthony Fauci, the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Accustomed to speaking from behind a lectern, Biden decided to have one placed in the middle of his new home studio — an awkward fit amid the backdrop of home bookshelves and personal pictures framed beneath a living room table lamp.

There were hiccups that showed the telltale signs of a 77-year-old candidate adjusting to a campaign that’s gone completely online in a matter of days. At the start of the webcast, Biden wasn’t sure when he was live. A few minutes in, his teleprompter appeared to have broken as he tried, but failed, to gesture beneath the camera shot for an unseen aide to hand him notes.

“The lectern in a living room look was really odd — nobody would do that in real life, so it shouldn't be done on social,” said Kevin Cate, former media strategist for one of Biden’s past opponents, Tom Steyer.

“Vice President Biden can do regular addresses, but they should look more like what the Obama White House did, seated and direct to camera,” Cate said. “Social media craves authenticity and engagement, so they should also lean into interactive and engaging live formats.”

But echoing the Biden campaign, Cate said that he believes the political damage done to the president from his own misleading statements and distortions at his press conferences far outweigh any Biden stumble. One Biden adviser added that people are seeing that Trump “puts the bully in bully pulpit.”

Biden advisers point out that Biden’s take-the-fight-to-Trump message has prevailed in the Democratic primaries and he won’t stray from a measured and moderate message that brought him to the precipice of clinching the Democratic nomination for president.

“It’s a balance. We are holding the president accountable without inciting panic but being fact-based about it with the approach the vice president is always going to take,” a senior campaign adviser said. “We’ve been very clear about these places where the president failed to live up to this moment, and how the late response to this is one of the factors that has complicated a lot of these things. The vice president is a responsible actor and so the campaign is a responsible actor.”

Trump’s Monday press briefing offered a contrast in style with Biden, as the president took more than an hour’s worth of questions from reporters. Cuomo, too, takes questions from reporters at his briefings. In both cases, the exchanges with the two executives reveal much about their thinking, and add a dose of drama that makes the press conferences engaging to watch. Biden, at home, was unable to do the same Monday.

While Trump has enjoyed majority support recently for his handling of the coronavirus recently, his overall approval rating remains surprisingly low, said Patrick Murray, Monmouth University pollster, whose survey released Monday showed Trump with 46 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval. That’s just a net 4-point shift in Trump’s favor from its national survey last month.

“Historically speaking, when we enter a crisis like this, you see a big bump for the president, a real rallying around the flag,” Murray said. “What we’re seeing is an unusually small rally-around-the-flag levels of support.”

Murray said that “where the numbers have really gone up is with governors. Their approval numbers are in the 70s.”

Bruce Gyory, a New York Democratic consultant, said Cuomo has thrived in the crisis precisely where Trump fails, by being consistent and calm and not picking fights with the press.

“Even though Cuomo hasn’t become anti-Trump rhetorically, he has become the anti-Trump in capital letters by his conduct,” Gyory said.

As for Biden, he said, he has little choice but to cede some of the political space to Cuomo and other governors.

“Biden is smart to get out there,” Gyory said. “He can be patient about the issue coming back to him. Because if I were a Republican, I would be worried not about Biden or Cuomo’s daily briefing, it would be the public reaction to Trump.”