In order to beat Donald Trump in November as well as heal the wounds he has inflicted on our democracy and our sense of peoplehood as Americans, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden needs to draw on the language and themes used by his former boss and good friend, President Barack Obama.
Given that Biden clearly enjoys talking about his time as Obama's vice president and proudly touts the accomplishments of the Obama administration—which he is certainly justified in doing—I’d like to see Biden more often work into his public remarks a few renditions of "As Barack said..." Especially now, with the pandemic having further revealed the truth of our interconnectedness as Americans, Biden’s rhetoric needs to evoke our sense of community and nationhood, of being a single people tied together by a shared fate, of being, as Obama so often called us, “one American family.”
Thus far in the campaign, Biden’s message centers too much on one of two ideas: “I’d do a better job than Trump” and “I can beat Trump.” The latter is more important during the primary campaign, so presumably we’ll see that fade once he wraps up the nomination officially. As for the former, it undoubtedly needs to be a core aspect—perhaps even the central element—of his general election message, since The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote is uniquely unsuited to serve in the position of great responsibility he currently holds.
Nevertheless, although candidates certainly must contrast themselves—both in terms of policy as well as personal characteristics—against their opponent, especially an incumbent opponent, history shows that Biden needs to present himself as more than just “Not Trump,” and more than just a generic Democrat on policy grounds.
This current race most reminds me of 2004. Democrats ran against an incumbent president whom they hoped to paint as a failure. You might remember seeing the slogan “Anybody But Bush” on bumper stickers all over the roads, at least in blue areas of the country. This year the phrasing may have altered—we’ve got “Anybody But Trump,” or the more sonorous “Vote Blue No Matter Who”—but the parallels are clear.
My concern is that Biden will fall into the same trap as did the 2004 Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who ran largely as “Not Bush.” Ask yourself what you remember most about Kerry’s campaign message. I’d venture that there’s not much. The thing that comes to my mind is the line with which he began his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention: “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” In hindsight, it feels like he thought all he needed to do was simply show up and present himself as the alternative to an incumbent whose failings were, in the minds of the Kerry campaign at least, self-evident to a majority of voters.
Another parallel in terms of messaging was the 1988 campaign that pitted Gov. Michael Dukakis, also of Massachusetts, against Vice President George H.W. Bush. Most famously, when accepting the Democratic nomination, Dukakis defined the campaign as follows: “This election isn't about ideology; it's about competence.” Defining the race that way didn’t make Dukakis president.
In addition to the parallels, there also exist fundamental differences between 1988, 2004, and 2020 because of who the Republican is. Even though the line about the Democrat’s superior competence applies even more obviously to Herr Twitler than it did to H.W. Bush, or even George W. Bush—whose profound, deeply impactful failures in foreign and domestic policy resulted more from ideologically-based choices than the worst of Trump’s, which derive from his sociopathic, narcissistic nature—a campaign based on touting his competence alone won’t make Biden president, either.
I’m confident, just from what we’ve already seen, that Biden won’t be as foolish as to run away from the policy differences between himself and his opponent and define the race, as Dukakis did, in a nonideological way. I’m not suggesting that Biden’s campaign thus far has completely lacked inspiring, inclusive rhetoric, or that he hasn’t spoken out effectively on the issues of hate, divisiveness, and the white supremacy that the current occupant of the Oval Office actively abets—a force that tears at our national bonds, while inflicting serious harm, particularly upon Americans of color and other groups vulnerable to his wrath. In his most effective speech thus far, which he delivered the night he won South Carolina and arguably became the front-runner, Biden was as inspiring and inclusive as he’s ever been in 2020.
The proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men and women are created equal, endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights. We say it all the time, but we’ve never fully lived up to it. But we’ve never before until this president walked away from it. And it’s the reason why [Rep. Jim Clyburn] and I and all of us are in this, I believe with every fiber of my being, that all men and women are created equal.
You know, I saw it a few days ago in a town hall in Charleston, Jim. I spoke with Reverend Anthony Thompson, whose wife Myra was studying the words of her Bible with eight other parishioners in Mother Emanuel, four and a half years ago. It was a weekly routine reading scripture and finding purpose and faith in God and each other. And in an instant hate, vengeance, white supremacy pierced that faith, and they were lost forever. But you know what I found the most remarkable thing in my career thus far. Remark about Reverend Thompson and the families of the Emanuel Nine. It’s through all that pain, all that grief, they forgave. And here’s the deal. In their forgiveness. They brought more change to South Carolina than any that’s occurred over the previous 100 years.
The Confederate flag came down. We’ll change. That’s why the Sunday after Jill and I and my family, we came back to mother Emanuel on Sunday services after the funeral of the victims because six weeks earlier, we had lost our son Beau, and we needed to be healed too. We need to be healed. I really mean this. We needed whatever they were exuding. And with every season that’s past, they’ve gotten up and found purpose to live life worthy of the ones they lost. Worthy of the blessings to live in this remarkable country. We left here, arrived in overwhelming pain thinking we can do this, we can get through this. So I want to tell you, it’s no small reason why I’m in this race. People like all of you here tonight, all around the country, the days of Donald Trump’s divisiveness will soon be over.
We need more of this from Biden. But even here, at his best, there are things he could have added to make these remarks even more powerful—namely, incorporating some of Obama’s most effective themes of inclusion. The 44th president, more than any elected official in our history, spoke in ways that were both aimed at including marginalized groups while also seeking to bind the members of those groups with straight, white Christians, together as Americans. Obama repeatedly and adeptly emphasized a sense of national community and nationhood.
Biden—like most Democrats—has been careful to comprehensively name various demographic groups during speeches in order to ensure that people of all backgrounds feel seen, but Obama showed how to do more than that. America isn't just a list of ethnic groups, and being inclusive doesn't just mean listing every group—as helpful as that can be. There has to be a common entity and consciousness into which all people are included, even as we simultaneously value and respect the various groups with which Americans of every background identify.
Saying that America is diverse is merely an acknowledgement that we are different from one another. The world is diverse. Obama’s version of America aspires to being a nation and a people who are simultaneously diverse and unified around a shared fealty to democratic values and the common good—as reflected in what I’ve described as democratic pluralism. Recall how Obama emphasized membership in the broader American community, going beyond solely naming various groups, as he did in his final State of the Union address in January 2016.
I can promise that a little over a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I will be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by those...voices that help us see ourselves not, first and foremost, as black or white, or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born, not as Democrat or Republican, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed. Voices Dr. King believed would have the final word -- voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love.
Trump, on the other hand, takes the exact opposite path when it comes to inclusive rhetoric. The dichotomy appears most starkly on immigration. In 2014, Obama defined Americans in a speech that’s just one great example for Biden to draw upon.
My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like or what our last names are, or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal, that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.
The reference to those coming across the Rio Grande shows Obama humanizing undocumented immigrants who come across the border from Mexico. Compare that to the dehumanizing language Trump has used on multiple occasions to describe those same people, not to mention his appalling response to the events at Charlottesville, when he told us that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a march where one side was a bunch of violent white nationalists and neo-Nazis.
Even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has race-baited, as seen in the now-infamous photograph of the notes for his March 19 speech, which had the word “corona” crossed out and “CHINESE” hand-written in its place, so that he could be sure to refer to COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus.”
The coronavirus has provided Biden the perfect opportunity to broadly contrast progressive values (as well as his own specific policy proposals) to those of Trump. In doing so, Biden can also easily pivot to reminding voters about his own work with President Obama, as well as his profound differences with Trump on matters such as health care—as he did in his March 27 CNN Town Hall where he called on the Orange Julius Caesar and his Republican allies to drop the lawsuit that seeks to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional.
The former vice president can also use the contrast over values and policies as another avenue to employ Obama-esque rhetoric, and even just quote the man himself. At that CNN Town Hall, Biden offered inspirational words about how “we’re seeing the soul of America now … Everywhere you look, you see people reaching out to help people. Everywhere you look, you see people doing things that represent who we are … I'm so proud—it sounds corny—but I'm so proud to be an American.” That’s a good start, and hopefully in prepared remarks he can expand on this type of theme by incorporating Obama’s unifying ideas more directly.
One thing the coronavirus has made even more clear is that the actions of a few of us can cause serious harm to a great many of us. It has made even more obvious that we are, in Obama’s words, one American family. COVID-19 has brought us to a place where we need hope and unity. Those are two emotions Obama evoked successfully enough to win election twice, while breaking a historic barrier few thought would fall in their own lifetimes.
While a major part of the general election campaign will certainly highlight Trump’s incompetence—both during the crucial early days of the coronavirus and on a horrifically high number of other issues—Biden must present himself as more than just someone who’d be a more competent president than Trump. Biden also needs to bring us together around commonly held values which are also in line with progressive values and policies, and inspire us by evoking our shared sense of Americanness. In order to do so, he's got to sound more like Barack Obama.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)