Biden-Trump: the two-horse race
- Step 1: Rhetoric and public speaking
- Step 2: Analysing demand
- Step 3: Analyse the offer
- Step 4: Match supply with demand
- Step 5: Fixing and sharpening the message
The results of the US elections in November will determine the political flow of the rest of the world. Many are fearful that Donald Trump will win and even more do not understand how a convicted felon has such a large voter base. Undoubtedly, America is a complicated country and there are many factors that have created the current political climate, but it is possible to explain why Trump resonates with the population in a way that Biden does not.
The answer is simple: political marketing.
Step 1: Rhetoric and public speaking
First and foremost, when creating a speech, one has to decide how to craft it. According to Aristotle's theories, there are three main options for creating arguments (the inventio phase): emotions (pathos), logic and reasoning (logos), or whether to rely on the credibility and popularity of the speaker (ethos). The political discourses of this century mostly choose emotions as the mainstay of any argumentation strategy.
It is therefore not surprising that the rhetoric of both Biden and Trump is governed and guided by pathos. Especially in Trump's case, arguments that appear to be logos (false syllogisms and other fallacies) are used, which are often not supported by real facts, but are convincing because of their appeal to emotions.
Rhetoric is always accompanied by oratory. This includes all aspects of communication other than words, i.e. body movement, posture, tone, distances, etc. The attack on Trump is a great example of this as the symbolism of the image of Trump with blood on his face, fist in the air and the American flag in the background has immense impact. Many argue that this attack may be the reason he wins the election. This theory is very likely to come true because Trump's advisors are using these images as a symbol of what he represents to his voters, of his strength and tenacity, especially with the image of the fist. One thing that helps this symbolism is that in the same week that Trump is being shot at, Biden says that the president of Ukraine is Vladimir Putin by introducing Volodimir Zelensky. It is a gaffe that damages Biden's image (in addition to the weakening he is already suffering, given his physical and mental deterioration, noticeable in his body movements and his sometimes disjointed responses to journalists) which in turn reinforces Trump's.
Step 2: Analysing demand
The great muscle of election campaigns - and where immense amounts of capital are invested - are polls and focus groups. These allow political consultants to know the recipients of their messages in minute detail (their habits, tastes, lifestyles) and what the concerns of that segment are. According to the Pew Research Centre (PRC), Trump's voters are mostly white, middle-aged, Christian, highly conservative and loyal to the Republican Party.
In the case of Biden, Democratic Party voters are middle-aged, more likely to be college-educated than his opposition voters, and half have no religious affiliation. In addition, the African-American and Latin American populations are very important constituencies (In 2020, 92% of the African-American vote went to Biden).
With this knowledge, both identify the needs of each target segment and structure their discourse accordingly.
According to a PRC poll in May of this year, the main concern of Republicans is inflation, followed by illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. In the election debate, the first block was the economy. Trump's response to the first question was a criticism of Biden that, in turn, addressed the main concern of Republican voters: "He hasn't done a good job. Inflation is killing us".
At the same time, the main concerns of Democratic voters are guns, affordable health care and climate change. In the first block of that debate, when talking about taxes, Biden redirected the topic to healthcare, focusing his speech on something that is of interest to his voters: "We could make sure that everything we need to do, child care, elder care, make sure we can strengthen our healthcare system."
Step 3: Analyse the offer
The application of this step is where so-called "dirty politics" tactics begin to be employed. The candidates' advisors conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats and Opportunities) analysis of both the opposition and themselves. Each campaign tries to reinforce the candidate's strengths and exploit the other's weaknesses. It is with that exploitation that you start to see the foul play between the politicians.
Trump's great weaknesses are his conviction and lack of support in certain segments of the population such as the African-American vote and the vote in highly educated areas. His main strengths are the way he embraces the concerns of his core vote and, primarily, his own personality and persona.
In Biden's case, his greatest weakness is his age and health. Doubts about his physical and psychological ability are front and centre in the media and his advisers have failed to adequately inoculate him against this weakness. Consequently, Trump is exploiting it and burying Biden's campaign message: "I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence - referring to Biden. I don't think he knows what he said either".
At the same time, Biden does not have a strong enough character to compete with Trump on that terrain. In the Americanisation of politics, the candidate's own character is even more important than his proposals. His private life, his personality, his skills, and so on. Not only is he competing with Trump's polarising persona, but his greatest weakness lies precisely in this area. If this is not remedied, it may be one of the major contributors to him losing this horse race.
Step 4: Match supply with demand
This step is the key to an effective campaign. A candidate should not have a campaign focused on unemployment and inflation if the public cares about education and national security. The candidate will be seen as ineffective, outdated and will sink the campaign.
In the election debate, Trump was able to address the main concern of his segment. He drew on his experience to lend credibility to his argument and reasoned that when he was president, inflation was not "killing" the country, inferring that he is the remedy. He does the same with immigration: "I'd like to ask him - Biden - why he allowed millions of people from prisons, from jails, from mental hospitals to come into our country and destroy our country". He expresses problems that correspond to the concerns of his voters and presents himself as the solution. Biden employs the same model as Trump, shifting the framing of issues to suit the issues that matter most to his voters.
Trump's online shop is replete with slogans and merchandising that embrace these concerns and which, in turn, exploit his weaknesses to use them in a way that works to his advantage. For example, he has mugs and T-shirts with the phrase "Never give up", using his mugshot to use the weakness of his own SWOT analysis to his advantage, reframing the message. Biden's online shop does something similar but does not use his weakness to its advantage. It reinforces its messages while alluding to citizens' concerns.
Step 5: Fixing and sharpening the message
All the weight of election campaigns rests on the central message, the slogan.
Trump has reused the slogan from his previous campaign, "Make America Great Again", for several reasons: it is a phrase recognised by his voters; his constituency identifies with it because many are patriotic; it is originally a phrase of Ronald Reagan, America's greatest president in the eyes of Americans; and it is a phrase of few words loaded with meaning. It is a message that, by its repetition, is instantly recognised and associated with Trump before Reagan. His communications consultants have managed to re-appropriate the phrase and use it to their own advantage. It is undeniable to recognise the brilliance of the message, regardless of one's ideology or opinion. It is an effective slogan, which manages to stick in the public mind and which conveys what Trump stands for: the American dream. It compiles his proposals in a few words and materialises his intentions, that he will make America the best nation, the strongest, the safest, etc.
"Let's Finish the Job", Biden's message, does not have the force or impact that Trump's does. It is a different slogan from the 2020 campaign and is not as laden with fanciful meanings. On its own it has a lot of punch; it speaks to Biden's experience, dedication and tenacity, but it does not appeal to that idyllic nationalism that Trump invokes. Fundamentally, his voters are different, and this has an impact on the kind of message a campaign will focus on. His constituency, for the most part, are not nationalist conservatives and have little in common with Republican voters. But, internationally, Trump's slogan overshadows Biden's. "Let's finish the job" does not resonate in the same way as Trump's ideology; it does not use change-resistant symbolic words, nor is the message instantly paired with its representative.
Apart from the main message of each candidate's campaign, the candidates have ancillary repetitive phrases that reinforce what they intend to convey. On Trump's website, the pop-up window reads "political prisoner". Despite the falsity of the message, the candidate manages to inoculate himself from his weakness, that is, by identifying his weakness as his conviction as a criminal, he is made a victim, appealing to emotions.
Another slogan on Trump's website is "They're not after me, they're after you...I'm just in the way". It appeals to the same meaning as the pop-up, to persecution and insecurity in American democracy. It appeals directly to the visitor, enhancing the power of the message and its meaning, that Trump is the salvation of the American dream.
Biden's website, too, speaks of threat, but this concept is directed at Trump. A caricature of Biden appears with a caption: "We have to stop Trump before it's too late". The purpose is to reach a different group of voters, the undecided and potential voters who do not want to vote for Trump. It is a message loaded with meaning, even if it doesn't seem so: it speaks of the danger posed by Trump, the insecurity and his lies. It brings together the arguments he has used in speeches and the election debate against Trump in a single sentence. It could be very effective if Biden's advisers manage to reduce the exploitation of his weakness to capture an electorate that Trump does not include in his campaign.