“Where there is no vision, the people perish…”—Proverbs 29:18
We’ve kicked off 2024 with the fear that the Republican presidential primary might be a short-lived exercise in futility, with Donald Trump coasting to the nomination, putting him one step closer to retaking the presidency. In light of that anticlimactic (if plausible) scenario, it’s not wildly premature to ask an important question: What’s Joe Biden’s affirmative message?
Don’t get me wrong. It’s possible that Biden can win solely because he is not Trump. And if Team Biden resorts to going “full Hitler,” it’s only because Trump has invited the comparison. Still, the notion that the “Orange Man Bad” platform is the only trick up Biden’s sleeve does not instill confidence. Especially when Trump is leading in many polls, despite the airing of all his dirty laundry. We are left with the question: Why should anyone vote for Biden?
It turns out, this is a hard question to answer. Just last month, The Daily Mail published a survey asking voters to describe, in one word, what each of the frontrunners wanted to achieve in a second term. The name “Donald Trump” quickly evoked “revenge,” a finding that (for obvious reasons) drove most of the news coverage.
Much less attention was paid to the way voters described Biden: “Nothing.” This, The Daily Mail’s Rob Crilly reasonably concluded, suggests Biden “is failing to communicate a clear manifesto to voters.”
“Revenge” might not have the same uplifting charm as “Morning in America,” but at least Trump has an ethos. Biden, conversely, lacks a raison d’etre.
If The Daily Mail’s survey doesn’t make Team Biden sit up and take notice, perhaps they should pay attention to Barack Obama’s former top advisor, David Axelrod, a man who has reportedly been called a “prick” by Biden, himself. (Disclosure: In 2018, I served as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, which Axelrod founded and directed at the time.)
For months now, Axelrod has been sounding the alarm about Biden’s re-election chances, leading some to accuse him of “bedwetting.” Yet to me (admittedly, I’m not a Democratic voter), Axelrod’s concerns seem warranted, and his most recent advice seems sincere.
Someone once told me that the definition of public relations is “doing good and getting credit for it.” In this regard, Biden’s biggest problem might just be that he cannot effectively lay claim to his accomplishments.
“I think Joe Biden has been a far more competent president than his ratings suggest,” Axelrod told Politico’s Ryan Lizza. “And this is purely a function of how people see him. These are communications issues.”
And while touting individual accomplishments is nice, conveying a strong and overarching narrative is nicer.
Back in 2011, Axelrod had the thankless job of informing then-President Obama that he had lost touch with the version of himself who won in 2008. It wasn’t enough, Axelrod said, to “sprinkle mentions of the middle class formulaically in speeches.” He needed to be “waging a day-in, day-out campaign on the issue.”
Along those lines, Axelrod believes that in addition to talking about “democracy,” Team Biden needs to get back to stressing “Biden’s middle-class roots, his faith, [and] his attachment to the military. Things that signified to people in middle America: He’s actually from here, he’s one of us.”
“Axe” isn’t the only one who sees this. “Biden should think about leaning into an economic populist message,” Joshua Green, author of The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics, tells me.
“[Trump senior adviser] Steven Bannon’s great fear in the White House was that Trump’s neglect would allow Democrats to steal that issue and run on a patriotic, progressive nationalism built around a big infrastructure plan, revived U.S. manufacturing, and a renewed labor movement—exactly the stuff Biden has delivered but gets little credit for from swing state voters,” Green continued.
Now, not everyone is convinced that concern is warranted. Caveats are in order. We are still early in the election cycle. And Axelrod’s analogy about Obama’s struggles in 2011 suggests that Biden is not unique in struggling to pivot from governing mode to campaign mode.
In just the last week, Biden has delivered political speeches in Valley Forge and Charleston, South Carolina—perhaps signaling his general election campaign has begun in earnest.
Still, whether you’re writing a political column or running a presidential campaign, it’s hard to be successful unless you have a very clear understanding about a) who you are, b) what you’re trying to say, and c) why you are even doing this.
Back in 1980, Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge to then-President Jimmy Carter was effectively destroyed when he couldn’t answer the question, “Why do you want to be president?”
Biden faces a related problem: The voters don’t know why he wants to be president—again.
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