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Takeaways from Biden’s public address last night

Vice President Biden made a public address last night, amidst the backdrop of a uncalled election result.

Prior to his address, CNN commentators noted that the occasion was “strange”. That it was clearly meant to be his celebratory acceptance address but due to the slow timing of vote counts and announcements, and the overly careful projections, there was not a final or semi-final announcement to launch his remarks.

Upon watching the remarks this morning, I felt it was stunning what he was able to do under these circumstances. His rhetoric masterly bridged the gaps on the national narrative, both incomplete and divided, and sought to bring us together and give us a shared vision.

Beginning with the visual and auditory - this appearance was absent of some of the pretense we have come to expect from political celebration. There was no hooting and hollering, there was a temper of steadfast acknowledgement of the moment, determination, but not pomp nor celebration. He wore a purple tie, which must have been a calculated choice, signaling that the strictly bordered blue and red map Americans have had their eyes glued to with can certainly blend.

His remarks landed with me at two key points.

The first, in what he did not do. He did not go point for point with Donald Trump on his complaints with the unfolding of the results. As he has done before, his rhetoric overshot beyond a narrow dialogue with an opponent and set sights as an address to create a broader public. He said that our democracy is supposed to be tested and that we are supposed to disagree on deeply held convictions. Then we are supposed to go through a process and honor that. He said, “we are not enemies”. With that, he positioned himself and Trump within a larger process, not outside it. Beautiful.

He also said that we won’t let the process be derailed. He only said it once and it was so clear and final. “I won’t let it happen”. The counting of the votes and  result of the election will be upheld, whatever it is. 

If a “public” is created by the function of its address - that is, the consistency of the public is determined by who is drawn in - then Biden has reached for the borders and drawn us all in to one public. Rhetoric can do this in a unique way that is unlike the social technologies of law, or the jab and pull of twitter outbursts, or the choreographed drama of a media narrative. What was done in Biden’s address soared past attempts and gave gravity and context to an uncertain moment.

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This is get out the vote poster that was just released from an artist I follow on insta. I want to take a look at its powerful visuality in comparison to past campaign and GOTV posters so I’m leaving it here as a bookmark to come back to later.

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This article by IBRAM X. KENDI helped me to understand the history and stakes within the broad topic of voter suppression. It is clear that “voter subtraction” (defined in the article by multiple means by which both parties work to reduce likely opposition votes, outright suppression being one) will play a central role in the results of this election. The article also helps me to place this within a history of purposeful efforts to suppress and subtract votes in past Presidential and down ballot races.

“The people who were attracted to Donald Trump in 2016 have become alienated from President Trump in 2020. White women, seniors, and suburbanites are abandoning him in droves. The other swing voters—who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 but did not vote in 2016—will likely be voting in high numbers, after many of them participated in the largest wave of anti-racist demonstrations in American history.”

in summary, It is democrats interest to play the game of ‘voter addition’ - lowering the voting age, advocating for online voting are among the examples Kendi gives in this article of recent tactics of addition that had Democratic support. These were denied traction in legislation, due to the Republican controlled Senate. Voter addition does not favor Republicans, in fact, there have been countless brazen tactics employed to limit access to voting. Among the forms addressed in the article are: websites crashing on registration deadline dates, blocking access of convicted felons from voting after time served, Voter ID laws, limiting access by limitation of polling locations (which create long lines and reduced access), massive purges of registered voters, and more. Perhaps most relevant, and most at risk of becoming a major topic in the current election amidst the backdrop of a global pandemic, is the President’s campaign to demonize the legitimacy of mail-in ballots. 

The “lightbulb” moment for me in this article, as in prior personal research into my role in undoing systemic racism and white privilege, is the understanding that voter rights are not equal. We require legislative action to protect equitable access to the right to vote. Voter “subtraction” is a strategy that includes suppression of the oppressed, and it is allowed to operate as long as it is not made the central issue. Kendi is right to point out that Democrats and the media need to make a more tireless effort to cover the ways in which voter subtraction operates, so that the sometimes silent mechanics by which it operates can be recognized. 

He also makes a tremendous point that, “Pollsters track voter addition. Pollsters struggle to track voter subtraction. They weren’t able to do so in 2016, and they seem unlikely to be able do so in 2020. “Voter suppression could render good, methodologically sound polls inaccurate if people who intend to vote cannot, for whatever reason, succeed in doing so,” Robert Santos, the vice president and chief methodologist of the Urban Institute, wrote in September.Taking full advantage of the raging pandemic, Republicans are waging a mass movement of voter subtraction, primarily subtracting Democratic voters and some of their own voters too. Ignoring this movement and primarily studying the polls is like trying to predict the outcome of a grand battle by studying only one side.”

I will be tracking this aspect of the election and its results carefully, and will seek analysis of the ways in which votes are not only added, but ways in which they may have been subtracted - and how Democrats can fight that.

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This Politico article breaks down Biden’s speech and identifies the strategies the Biden campaign is employing in messaging to gain a competitive edge. It also teases out some of the rhetorical references the campaign is making to American presidents and and presidential candidates of the past, particularly FDR. 

One of the rhetorical choices we see Biden continually make is that of someone who “tells it like is”. As this works in his favor running against an incumbent who regularly lies, misrepresents, and obfuscates, we can expect Biden to continue to choose vernacular that underscores his plain-spoken-ness. This works in the immediacy of our culture as well. When taken as sound-bites, the direct tone of “American people deserve to have it straight from the shoulder” (an FDR quote from early days of WWII, has refreshing authenticity. It is repeatable, feels close and familiar, like a friend, uncle, or parent. 

“In the early days of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt told the country, ‘The news is going to get worse and worse before it gets better and better, and the American people deserve to have it straight from the shoulder.’ Straight from the shoulder: The job of a President is to tell the truth. To be candid. To face facts. To lead, not to incite. That’s why I am speaking to you today.”

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The New York Times link here highlights what they are calling 4 key moments in Biden’s debate performance. They were, according to this article,

1. “Just shut up, Man”

2. when Biden drew data together to call Trump the “worst president ever”

3. When Biden said “I am the democratic party”

4. When Biden invoked the memory of his son to defend veterans against Trump’s casual insults. 

I will use this a launching point to discuss, through a rhetorical lens, some take-aways I had from the debates. I will use concepts from our readings to help understand what is happening here, and I will reflect on how this compares and contrasts to new media in past presidential elections that we’ve talked about so far in our presidential primers.

Firstly, last night’s debate has been widely characterized in social and mainstream media as a “dumpster fire” and I would have to agree. If your definition of a successful debate is that you walk away having heard 2 exceptional orators carry a message of how they will be a successful president, and you believe a debate is a setting where the audience can be persuaded, you would be disappointed in last night’s debate. 

If your definition of a successful debate was for either candidate to trip over themselves to a damaging extent so that your side could garner more support, you might have something. For example, one of the most mobilizing moments came when Trump refused to denounce white supremacy after being directly asked 3 times. That being said, Biden likewise missed the opportunity to speak to our history of racism and it’s systemic real-world consequences in any real way - instead choosing to codify his language around race in terms of  “division” and “unity”. There is a distinct voice missing here where the spectrum starts (on Trumps end) with “stand back and stand by” and on Biden’s end with essentially, “can’t we all get along?” This debate, like many others, takes on character of what is NOT said as much as what is. 

If you wanted to come away with a clear idea of what each candidate believes, and how they are defined against each other, and, for Biden, how he will respond to being bullied, we did see that on full display. They each, in their way, used language to get stuff done. However, it is my assertion that they were not trying to get the same stuff done.

Trump’s strategy seems to be to talk over the moderator or opponent any time what is being said is politically damaging, to muddy waters with spurious facts and assertions, to attack with off-topic characterizations, distracting the listener and the opponent from the central discussion. This was, as it has been in his past debate performances, effective. He was not trying to win the debate. he was trying to sound alarms to his base, to de-stabilize his opponent away from any logical winning strategy that would allow him to carry a clear message, and to confuse the disillusion the American public into turning away from government as an institution that cares or can in any way be effective at governing. 

Biden, on the other hand, had a different strategy. Knowing Trump’s debate style was to have him on the defensive at all times, Biden set himself a platform early in the debate that he was not going to ‘truth police’ every fact that Trump set - he was not going to fall into the trap of bickering over every lie the president told. He was mostly able to do this; indeed, some of the most effective moments of the debate is when he was able to rise above and before getting to his point simply remind the viewers that “he lies. you cannot believe what he says, he is making things up and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about”. 

While most of the airtime was taken up in bickering among each other and moderator, the messaging that Biden was most successful at getting across was that a) Trump is a liar and doesn’t have a plan to reduce loss of life during the pandemic or to restore the economy b) That Biden believes the role of president is to govern, lead and care for America c) that everyone has to vote. 

I counted 10 times during the debate where Biden was able to address the American viewers directly - and those were the most clarion moments of persuasion. He, as he and Jill Biden both did during the convention, fashioned his talking points around a relatable home-life. He evoked emotion when speaking about missing family members at the table due to COVID deaths, he illustrated his paternal defense of veterans in his pointed attack towards Trump’s mis-treatment of veterans. It is poignant, that, in a debate, where the moments of persuasion are meant to be had between the two debaters, instead, the winning strategy tended to be to not debate Trump, but to use the valuable viewership airtime to speak directly to the public. 

In closing, I do not agree that these were the strongest of Biden’s moments. As i’ve outlined above, the strength and weakness of Biden’s performance was in his what was not said, rather than what was said. It is true, we did get to see both candidates’ character - and the question remains, who is listening, is this a setting where persuasion occurs, and did either candidate get enough done?

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“No new worlds”

This article speaks to the power of rhetoric in how systemic racism was forged and in dismantling that systemic racism by dismantling the rhetoric. Reading this through the lense Edbauer provides, we can see how rhetorical situation is not only in flux, is not only a conglomeratation, but also interacts in network through timed in lives experience, echoing and interplaying with the rhetorical situation across audience and purpose.

The Wampanoags in this article adeptly target the notion of a “new world” as a convenient myth that was used to justify centuries of violence, disempowerment and white supremacy. In a similar way to Edbauerw case study of “keep Austin weird” - the visual representation of the slogan both points to an exigence and generates exigence.

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Anne Ranch on Instagram is a satyrical account of a US senator

She hilariously roasts some common political rhetoric (what booth would call “mere rhetoric”) and she also plays with tropes (like her mock up of her news worthy 60th Instagram post, or her weekly birthday posts. Great examples of fashioning rhetoric where there is no Bitzerian rhetorical situation). She uses absurd humor to call attention to real absurdity and I love it. Check it out. I think there will be more here to reflect on as we read more about what rhetoric, media and the pres election.

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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/06/trump-pence-kamala-harris-409335

I mean this basically just got me excited to see a VP debate soon. I think this article raising the concept of labeling the others opponent as an offensive calculated measure is important. Campaigns need need to construct a narrative that suits, fits and benefits them. They sort of induce a shaped reality for voters in this way. I remember Jon Kerry getting “flip flopper” labeled and for some reason it stuck and hurt. Lots of people don’t know anything about Kerry other than “he’s a flip flopper”; which prior to that election really didn’t carry much import.

This article also makes a good point that Trump camp needs to be careful not to contradict themselves if they are to build a strong and clarion narrative for their would-be voters. If they are on offensive with a label it needs to be crystal clear to their audience why a Biden-Harris presidency is bad or dangerous to them and their interests. Seems in this article that there are variables in Harris’s record and the various interests at play that makes that hard to do, particularly in relation to Biden’s positions.

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Biden took a fact that we all have read about “trump told bob woodward that he knew coronavirus was deadly” and he spoke to the meaning of why that information is important in this speech.

Ultimately his persuasive argument is shaped around “if he had acted sooner, X number of lives” would be saved. It’s particularly effective bc he starts with “one week sooner” and then back to “2 weeks sooner” and you see the numbers jump up to 54,000 lives saved. He is using rhetoric composition - asking us to imagine IF - and conditional tense “would have saved XYZ lives”. Without directly stating so, he equates Trumps judgment (or lack of) with harm and death to Americans by juxtaposing this one fact (Trumps decision to down play the virus) alongside a massive loss of life.

It’s also notable that I, in the audience, have not and probably would not view the whole speech - but this excerpt was served to me, ostensibly by some paid effort. It is the right length of sound byte to contain this point, which responds to the rhetorical situation, puts language and data around its meaning, and helps me pinpoint exactly why the fact Trump knew earlier should matter to me and other voters.