Biden is the likely nominee. Will any one get excited? (please help!)
While I am personally a Bernie supporter, let’s imagine for a moment that the nominee is Biden (which looks super likely). Running Biden is like running John Kerry in 2004: the moderates rushed into a marriage without being in love.
Yes, he got the “enthusiastic” support of traditional Democrats but they have yet to give an emotionally charged, easy to travel narrative on why they want Biden other than fearing Trump. To paraphrase 2008 Joe Biden, Biden’s tagline might as well be “A noun, a verb, Barack Obama.”
So in the last week, I have started to “poll test myself.” I worked through different threads on how on Earth I am going to get excited about Joe Biden as the nominee. Not simply, “We need to beat Trump!” That kind of negative partisanship is going to be essential for victory but running on a referendum of Trump alone will almost definitely give us another four more years of Trump.
John Kerry’s campaign never had a narrative that found its emotive core or was participatory. So to get to the emotive core for Biden, I started from where I am supporting: with Bernie. Then I went to Obama. Then to Trump. And finally, I circled back to Biden….with something that might make feel genuinely excited. Please help and provide input and ideas so we can start testing this out together.
Here goes:
Bernie’s Emotive Core is Honesty
Yes, yes: Bernie represents “political revolution,” and making the Democratic Party the party of the working class, etc. But when I really go to the core of this, Bernie has an appeal that goes way beyond the popularity of Democratic socialism, Medicare for All, etc. Similar to Greta Thunberg, Bernie is not a likely person where you’d say: “that’s someone who is genuinely mediagenic.”
So what do Greta and Bernie have in common? They shoot from the hip. They are completely and utterly honest.
Bernie versus Trump, is about Honesty versus Lies
I have a loved one who claims to be an independent, yet always votes Republican. If any candidate ran against Trump, he’d admit, “Sure, Trump is a liar. But they are ALL liars.” The one candidate he wouldn’t say that about is Bernie Sanders.. Even when talking about how awful his policies would be, he gives Bernie that: he’s honest.
So with Bernie, in theory, his core quality is that he’s the one who is actually honest; and Trump is a liar pretending to be honest. Sure, sure: it’s a fight for the ages about democratic socialism versus crony capitalism, but ultimately it’s simply a tale of two New Yorkers: one who actually tells it like it is and one who is a full of shit phony.
Biden’s Dilemma
When I ask people what they like about Biden, they say, “he doesn’t yell at me like Bernie.” That’s not a proactive quality.
So then I ask further and they’ll say, “He’ll hire qualified personnel.” I just don’t see that many people outside the newsroom at Vox are going to rally around that.
They’ll say, “He’ll bring back sanity.” I can see the merits of the “sanity narrative” but there’s some fundamental problems:
1) It’s almost all against Trump while not being FOR Biden.
2) Biden will need cultural excitement from progressives and generally, we progressives want to move forward, not back.
3) While Bernie’s honesty is grounded in a bold vision that you can FEEL, Biden’s experience and so-called “sanity” is: not something you can FEEL. Firstly, because Americans hate a vanilla flavor in our presidential candidates….we need to put in some vanilla bean. But even more so, “sanity” does not ring true for “crazy uncle Joe.” Sure, he has a long senatorial record that sounds sane enough (plus, he likes to yell the name “BARACK OBAMA!”) but unlike Obama, Biden’s ethos is NOT that of a sane person. In fact, he always seems one gaffe away from a nursing home. So “sanity” just doesn’t feel authentic.
What does? Well, let’s go to the emotive core of the guy that Biden has hitched his wagon to: Barack Hussein Obama.
Obama’s Emotive Core is HOPE
Obama’s entire presentation and life story was the story of HOPE. And behind the core of HOPE, behind the core of the person who stood before New Hampshire voters and said that the entire American story is a story of “three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes. We. Can.”
The Audacity of Hope that is embodied in those three words, “Yes We Can” is the story of Barack Obama: a person who fought the odds and won. Time and again, Obama repeated that it was an unlikely story: skinny kid with big ears and a strange last name, not to mention a middle name: Hussein. Not only African American but half-Kenyan, raised by a white mom and grandparents in Honolulu (and a bit in Indonesia). And yet, that story involved his becoming a successful community organizer, Harvard law professor, and state senator. It’s a personal story that authentically connects to the collective story of the American Dream.
Trump’s Actual Narrative is “I Don’t Care”
At first blush, Trump’s entire ethos is a reaction to not liking that a Black man entered the WHITE House.
And the truth is that the two most important lines in American 21st century political history are “Yes We Can” and “Make America Great Again.” And while “Yes We Can” are three magic words that perfectly summarize the progressive mindset of optimism about the future, Trump’s slogan perfectly captures the conservative mindset of optimism about the past.
In many regards, Trump’s supporters see him the way Bernie’s supporters see Bernie: authentic and honest; telling it like it is. Similarly, Trump and Bernie both yell: a lot. But Bernie’s rage is on behalf of all of us, Trump’s rage is only about an imagined past America. And more so, unlike past “out of bounds” conservatives like George Wallace or Ronald Reagan, Trump doesn’t actually care. Trump is like a cheap knock off of a reactionary: Trump is to Wallace or Reaganwhat a lazy Elvis impersonator at a Las Vegas strip club is to Elvis.
Because the truth is that the tribal rage of Trump supporters is real; but for Trump, it is more nihilistic. Trump simply doesn’t care. What makes him seem like “Teflon Trump” is not his core beliefs. It’s that he has a primal set of instincts on how to divide and distract to gain attention and the temporary feeling of power. That’s all there is. Beyond that, Trump doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t care: Not about any one.. Even money and sex for him are about feeding his insatiable fix for more attention. He has rendered himself as something inhuman: he has become less than a person. He’s more of a blinking red light on a camera that is measuring how to get ratings.
The level of Trump not caring about any one or any thing is evident throughout his entire biography. But it’s also in the ethos of his administration. Remember Melania’s jacket as she was on her way to greet children who her husband had ordered to be forcibly kidnapped from their parents arms and thrown into caged concentration camps? It said all we need to know, “I DON’T REALLY CARE, DO YOU?” When Trump was called out for his corruption, Mick Mulvaney told America to “get over it.” Mike Pompeo said that Americans do not “care about Ukraine.” This cynical “not caring” about anything except attention runs throughout the course of everything: from climate policies to Hurricane Maria to….I mean, the list is far too exhaustive.
We could compose a song about all of the things that Trump doesn’t care about and the song could never end. Trump doesn’t care about Gold Star parents, POWs, or the memory of American GI’s killed in WWI or WWII, the very ones who were killed fighting Nazis. In fact, Trump himself seems pretty cool with the very Nazi ideology that we thought we had destroyed (but didn’t). Actually….Donald Trump seems pretty cool with every single archetype of evil in American history: tyrannical empires, Confederates, the Nazis, the KKK, the KGB, the Mafia, corrupt Wall Street Fat Cats, and sexual predators. He somehow lets all of the bad guys in American history flow through his sick, coarse body because he has no conscience: “I don’t really care, do you?”
Yes. I really care. So do you. And so does Joe Biden.
Joe Biden’s Core Quality is that he CARES
Earlier in this piece, I referenced a Republican voting loved one who would totally admit that Bernie is honest. That same loved one would agree that Joe Biden CARES. In fact, it’s hard to imagine any one being convinced that Joe Biden DOESN’T care.
He’s our Crazy Uncle Joe. Our quirky grandfather. And uncles may be crazy and grandfathers may be quirky — but they truly care about their families. So who is Joe Biden’s family? There’s the family members he lost to a terrible accident. And his son that he lost to cancer. His steadfast devotion to their memories is more than apparent — as his steadfast and highly emotional support for his living family. You can feel it when he talks about them.
Joe talks about his former colleagues in the Senate as his family — they saved him after he lost his wife and one year old daughter. They were there for him. And, when Joe talks about Americans….you can feel like, he CARES about Americans as if we are one extended family. Sadly, he’s a bit of a crazy uncle and a dysfunctional grandfather to the American family: he often gets things dead wrong or is out of touch. But he’s also family. Just like that loved one that I’ve mentioned. Because on a purely emotional level, my loved one cares. And so, too, does Joe Biden.
This entire primary, I’ve seen the narratives for everyone except Biden. Bernie: honest people’s man goes up against dishonest oligarchy. Or Warren: the smart “nasty women” strike back against Wall Street. Or Bloomberg (ugh: I genuinely don’t like that dude): real billionaire goes up against fake billionaire. There’s even obvious ones for Mayor Pete and Amy K, as both are calm midwesterners going up against a deranged lunatic.
But for Biden, it’s just simply the fact that he cares. And so do we. And in this battle, we will need to reach down to the elemental reasons for why any one would bother to be for an unprecedented confluence of movements: Black Lives Matter, Green New Deal, Fight For Fifteen, United We Dream, Families Belong Together, Domestic Workers Alliance, Occupy Wall Street, Medicare For All, PRIDE, the Human Rights Campaign, MeToo, Fridays for Future, etc. Or why labor activists ever bothered to say “Si Se Puede” or that so many followed Barack Obama when he said “Yes We Can.” Those elemental reasons come down to giving a fuck. To caring.
So what about….
#YesWeCare as a social media campaign
Maybe this is too corny. Or too much of a photocopy of a photocopy of Obama. Or maybe if this primary is teaching us anything, it’s that Americans miss Barack Obama’s decency. And as we lead this nation toward a beautiful tomorrow that is far more beautiful than anything Obama delivered on, perhaps we need to accept that in an age where Mitch McConnell, Fox News, and Donald Trump have hijacked this nation: that CARING is now a radical act.
Too many progressive activists have come to think of the spirit of “Yes We Can” as over. It’s barely even fucking started. In 2008, we said “Yes We Can” and when Obama won, we didn’t fight him. The Tea Party did. We won’t make that mistake with President Joe Biden. We’re going to make him do the right thing from the moment of his election. We’re going to push for a freshman class of progressive Congresspeople and Senators to be ushered in that will carry on a revolution that will push Biden to be bigger than he is.
So imagine that we start pumping out visuals to #YesWeCare…..and a social media campaign where we can invite the entire world to share what we care about:
“I care about my child having clean air and being safe from gun violence. #YesWeCare #Biden2020”
“I care about my father having Social Security and Medicare as he deals with COPD Stage Four #YesWeCare #Biden2020”
“I care about my mother who is vulnerable to the coronavirus. #YesWeCare #Biden2020”
“I care about all Dreamers who are being told ‘to go back to where they came from’ when the United States is where they came from. #YesWeCare #Biden2020”
Let’s lean into this shit and care the fuck out of it.
Let’s play on the word, “care” and get the Domestic Workers Alliance agenda front and center for their emphasis on CARE. Get health care up there, because #YesWeCare
I know it might sound cheesy. But if we believe in it and own it, this shit can spread organically and become something that is earnest in an awesome way. The age of the ironic, apathetic hipster is dead. As we face the sixth mass extinction on this planet, we all need to care. And we need to contrast this with a sociopath and his sick administration who do not care. This meme, #YesWeCare allows for elasticity to express frustration and aspiration, and to demand hope and change with teeth.
I think we can do this.
I think that, together, we can begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea:
Yes. We. Care.
