The problem with ‘Settle for Biden’
Elizabeth Billman | Senior Staff Photographer
Former Vice President Joe Biden is facing resistance in his campaign for president. The opposition comes from those to his left within the Democratic party and from more moderate voters who are disillusioned by Trump but struggling to accept the Democratic nominee.
In response to these critiques, a growing number of Biden supporters have adopted a “vote blue no matter who,” and an “anyone but Trump” campaign method, opting to appeal more to the moderates instead of the progressives.
From organizations such as Settle for Biden to viral social media graphics, this message encourages Americans who are hesitant about Biden to swallow their dissent and cast a blue ballot. Unfortunately, messages like these may ring hollow in the current political climate.
There's a bigger conversation to be had today. We need to talk about people who are dying, who don't have childcare, or healthcare, or homes, or jobs and people who are dying en masse.Sydney Gold, Columnist
All campaign advertisements aspire to achieve the same goals, said Shana Gadarian, an associate professor of political science at SU. Voters need others to view their favored candidate positively, view the opposing candidate negatively and cast their ballot accordingly, Gadarian said.
“What is kind of special about this cycle is that you’re seeing a focus on the candidates from these outside groups,” Gadarian said. “They’re less concerned about any particular issue, and they’re really concerned about Trump as president.”
But the very existence of these advertising campaigns means that there are clearly still voters for whom the reality of an extended Trump presidency is not enough to warrant a Biden vote. Instead of offering arguments to voters who are unsure of what Biden can do for them, campaigns such as these insist that voting for Biden is a moral imperative without offering tangible examples of how the Democratic nominee could fix the country.
The messaging makes the conversation about sweeping ethical positions, about good guys and bad guys, but that’s not what this election should be about. This election is about hunger, the nearly 200,000 dead from the coronavirus, the 43 million people facing eviction, the 30 million who have lost their jobs and the estimated seven million of whom will become uninsured as a result.
Yes, the election is about Biden winning the presidency, but it’s also about where we go from here and how we ensure we never return back to the “normal” America. Continuing the pattern of campaigning on personality, on the characters of hero and villain, can’t save the country from the trap it fell into in 2016.
A single mother who can’t help her young child log on to online classes because she can’t afford broadband internet is less concerned with the sweeping Democratic implications of ousting Trump from office. A family of five with no income doesn’t need platitudes about the light and the dark. American’s need to be told what they will be getting and how they will be helped by electing Biden.
Polling shows that, while 66% of Trump’s supporters view his candidacy enthusiastically, the same is true for only 46% of Biden’s. What Biden supporters, or those who lean toward Biden, identify with instead of enthusiasm for Biden is a feeling of anxiety about Trump. If you’re campaigning to a nervous base, why offer them more concern or shame them for that trepidation. Why not offer them a portrait of what could be instead?
“When you make people fearful, you have to give them a solution to that. So if the concern is another four years of Donald Trump, you have to give them a solution,” Gadarian said. While Biden being elected is imperative to the realization of that solution, it doesn’t constitute a full picture of what must be done to resuscitate the United States.
Syracuse University earned a spot in the Princeton Review’s top 10 most politically involved college campuses last year, so it’s no surprise that SU students are already organizing and participating in the upcoming presidential election.
SU Students for Biden functions as an on-campus hub for students who support the Biden-Harris ticket, and the group operates an Instagram page. The participation of college students and other young people in the upcoming election will be crucial in cinching the victory for Biden, a victory I personally hope he secures.
I hope organizations such as SU Students for Biden remain focused on the policy aspects of this campaign and avoid playing into the same character-based narratives that drove the election cycle in 2016.
Concluding that the 2016 presidential election would’ve ended differently if only the Democrats had emphasized that Trump was bad would be difficult. They did. But there’s a bigger conversation to be had today. We need to talk about people who are dying and those who don’t have childcare, or health care, or homes, or jobs.
Democrats need to accept the reality that Biden getting elected doesn’t automatically fix that. Biden getting elected and doing something about it does. What is inherent in a Biden presidency is the end of Trump’s, a horror through which we have lived, which has made many Americans skeptical in a way they never knew they had to be. But you can’t run a campaign around a person.
You cannot ask someone to vote for absence. Instead, now is the time to paint a picture of what exactly the Biden campaign can, and will do, for Americans suffering under Trump.
Sydney Gold is a sophomore political science and magazine journalism major. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at segold@syr.edu. She can be followed on Twitter at @Sydney_Eden.
Published on September 6, 2020 at 11:10 pm
