Joe Biden has only been running for president a couple days, but he’s already signaling it’s going to be a tough, shrewd campaign. At least, that’s my analysis based on his first ad.
Let’s start with the imagery, which is always more important than the words. Turn down the sound and watch it (I’ll wait).
The first image is a little girl on her dad’s shoulders putting up an American flag. The second is a flag flying over a small town—with what looks to be a church in the background. The third is the Iwo Jima memorial (six U.S. Marines hoisting Old Glory). If you’re keeping score, that is three different shots with three American flags.
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Biden isn’t the first politician to wrap himself in the flag. But as we will see a little later, this patriotic imagery is inextricably linked with his message.
First, though, why does a campaign ad warrant this kind of analysis? Unlike other forms of campaign communication (such as a speech or debate) every detail in a presidential campaign ad (especially the first ad out of the gate) is meticulously prepared.
If you want to understand what a campaign is trying to do or say, a good place to start is to look at what they are paying money to produce, edit, and disseminate. (This probably is even truer of Biden’s campaign, inasmuch as it seems likely they will attempt to limit his interactions with the media and the public.)
Back to the ad. That patriotic imagery screams that Biden is middle America. He’s not scary. He’s not radical. He’s not out of touch. (Message to Republicans: You’re not going to to otherize this Democrat. You won’t “swiftboat” or “out-‘Murica” Uncle Joe.)
Next, the narrator reminds us (in an avuncular, trustworthy tone) that “courage,” “opportunity,” “democracy,” and “freedom” are “the values that built this country.”
And then…the turn comes.
These same values, the narrator warns, “are under attack.”
Now, suddenly, American flags are replaced with footage of angry Jan. 6 rioters.
Instead of Old Glory, the flags they are waving say “Trump 2020.”
If President Biden represents the flag, baseball, mom, and apple pie, these people represent the opposite.
Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in this ad, but Biden’s assumption (like mine) is clearly that Trump will be the Republican nominee. And like Batman needs the Joker, Biden, who is 80, probably needs the threat of Trump to justify his own primary and general election candidacy.
Indeed, when Biden vows to “finish the job,” vanquishing Trump is presumably what he means.
This sense is reinforced by the tweet Biden sent along with his first ad, which reads: “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment where they have been called on to protect our democracy, to defend it, to stand up for it. And this is our moment.”
Now comes some sleight of hand. The narrator tells us that this “extremist movement” wants to “overturn elections, ban books, and eliminate a woman’s right to choose.”
But do these three things really all belong together?
Obviously, the Jan. 6 rioters were trying to overturn the 2020 election. Stopping them is tantamount to saving liberal democracy. That much is true. But what about the other two?
The implication is that if you are pro-life (like I am) you must also be anti-American, and that stopping radicals like yours truly is tantamount to defending democracy.
I’m not saying there wasn’t some overlap between pro-life conservatives and insurrectionists, but defending the right to life of the unborn wasn’t a big motive for most Jan. 6 rioters (indeed, some of the most radical right-wingers support abortion).
As such, Biden’s campaign is deviously attempting to conflate truly illiberal acts like stopping the peaceful transfer of power with an admittedly hot-button issue that conservatives have been advocating for fifty years. In so doing, Biden is prepared to tar Trump with DeSantis’ policy baggage, or (if the GOP primary works out differently than we suspect) tar DeSantis with Trump’s insurrectionist baggage.
What else would you expect from a guy who told African-Americans that Mitt Romney(!) wants to “put you all back in chains”? Still, it’s hard to make such distinctions when the last Republican president’s supporters literally attacked the U.S. Capitol.
As Biden’s first ad begins to wrap up, the music swells, and we return to patriotic imagery, and the narrator zeroes in on what this election is about.
So what are the stakes? “Joe Biden is running for re-election to make certain that the sun will not set on this flag,” the narrator says. “The promise of American democracy will not break.”
If you want to know how Biden will try to frame the election, they just told you. In 2024, Democracy is literally on the ballot.
During normal times, this kind of statement coming from Team Biden would be grandiose and laughably melodramatic. But with Donald Trump on what looks to be a glidepath to the GOP nomination, it feels a bit more like truth in advertising.
