Biden Needs to Stoop to Trump's Level if He Wants to Win

When Trump ran in 2016, his slogans like “Make America Great Again” and “Build the Wall” were staples during his campaign, slogans that, due to its vagueness and allure, proved successful in getting him elected. He often used what many would classify as incredibly offensive rhetoric, most notably towards Mexican immigrants. When talking about Mexican immigrants, he would say things like “they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.“They’re taking our jobs…They’re taking our money.” He would use an us vs. them rhetoric, a type of rhetoric that has proven successful in gaining followers. This parallels what Karakaya argues when discussing interrelated dichotomies of us vs them. Similar to how Erdogan sets up key binary oppositions, Trump creates an us vs. them dynamic in which the U.S is us and Mexico is them. 

However, with the 2020 election nearing, such slogans like MAGA will not have the same effect as they had in the 2016 election. However, a recent article from USA Today has pointed out that, amidst the COVID-19 epidemic in the US, Trump has employed the same rhetoric he used in 2016, only China has replaced Mexico. Trump has even gone as far to suggest that the Coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. In 2016, Trump’s rhetoric was as follows: Mexico is the problem because they are taking American jobs and sending drug dealers and rapists into the US. The rhetoric now is that China has stolen millions of American jobs and is to blame for the coronavirus. 

What does this mean for Joe Biden and his hopes for beating Trump in 2020? The same article for USA Today suggests that if Biden wants to avoid what happened to Hillary in 2016, he needs to adopt the same campaign strategies that Trump uses. Wagner-Pacifici and Tavory speak to this in their discussion of why Trump was able to attract so many supporters: “the excitement of not knowing what will happen next, and how, sometimes bridged even strong political ideological difference” (23). In other words, Trump’s slogan to make America great again has the qualities that summarize his coalition of symbols and values but does not actually get at the content, yet people still know and are compelled by that part of the story that is so vague. This slogan was successful for this very reason; it spoke to many people by virtue of its allusiveness.

To parallel this, the article speaks to how the democratic party must understand that what will win the upcoming election will not be who has the best plan for healthcare, education, debt, climate change, income inequality, etc. If this were the case, Trump would not be sitting in the oval office right now. As Wagner-Pacifici and Tavory points out, the mapped and sophisticated manner in which Hillary answered questions during the presidential debates might have answered the question she was asked but did not actually help her in the polls (26). If the democratic party wants to win, Biden needs to come up with a “direct and succinct appeal that cuts through the noise and reaches them [voters] on a human, personal level,” much like how Trump’s slogan “Make American Great Again” reached his voters in 2016.

Sources:

Bardella, K., 2020. Coronavirus And Xenophobia: 'Blame China' Is Trump's 2020 Version Of 'Build The Wall'. [online] Usatoday.com. Available at: <https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/06/trump-blame-china-coronavirus-new-blame-mexico-build-wall-column/3085647001/> [Accessed 8 May 2020].

Karakaya, Y.  (2018). The conquest of hearts: the central role of Ottoman nostalgia within contemporary Turkish populism. Am J Cult Sociol. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-018-0065-y. 

Wagner-Pacifici, R., & Tavory, I. (2017). Politics as a vacation. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5(3), 307-321. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-017-0036-8.