No one would ever accuse Joe Biden of being extremely online.
As a candidate, he hinted that he wasn’t particularly interested in social media. In a reversal typical of the political world, his aides let it be known that a communications team crafted his tweets and posts, not Biden himself. His campaign focused on winning local TV markets, not winning the morning with Twitter cognoscenti and “Morning Joe” regulars on MSNBC.
In an age of news microcycles that come and go like the wind, and running against a sitting president who tweets around the clock about what seems to be on his mind, Biden’s approach to modern media offered a implied promise to the voters: I will be the remedy to the way Donald Trump lives rent-free in your heads.
During the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, a Biden adviser told Ryan Lizzamy former colleague at Politico, about how Biden’s extremely offline persona was part of his winning strategy of appealing to what political operatives often call “the norms.”
Those ordinary voters weren’t glued to their phones all day; they were doing “normal” American things like going to work, grocery shopping, calling their grandkids, watching “Wheel of Fortune” and generally going about their lives without following the latest memes or chatter class obsessions of the day .
“I get this question all the time: Why does the press hate him so much?” said the aide to Lizza. “And the answer is because they’re younger and they want someone fresher.”
First of all, let’s make one thing clear: the press does not “hate” Joe Biden. But this unidentified aide’s point was that by lavishing attention on newer candidates like Pete Buttigieg or more fashionable left-wing dust like Bernie Sanders, elite reporters and cable talking heads were losing out Biden’s genuine appeal to the older voters who make up the base of the Democratic Party, and who would end up elevating him to the nomination.
It was an expression of confidence in Biden’s political strategy at a time when the outcome of the primaries was uncertain. But he also betrayed to endure, Rodney Dangerfield style feelings of resentment among his advisers that Biden has no respect among media tastemakers and pundits.
“People who went through the primaries and the general election with him learned to take this longer view of the vicissitudes of the political news cycle,” said Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser.
He added that despite all the criticism of the president’s age — he’ll turn 79 in November — and the decades he’s spent in the Senate and as vice president, his years of experience in Washington have given him “wisdom” and a patience about the pace of agreement-making in Congress that would be difficult to reproduce.
At times, the Biden team’s resentment of what it sees as the continued underestimation of his political instincts and skills by the press and pundit class has exploded into the public eye.
Biden’s presidency
With the midterm elections looming, this is where President Biden stands.
A primary school incident stands out. In January 2020, in a sit-down interview with the editorial board of this newspaperBiden said: “I’m not dead and I’m not going to die!”
The editorial board of the New York Times (which is completely isolated from the news operation, where I work) decided to endorse both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar instead of Biden, a Solomonic exercise that infuriated his team.
In response, the Biden campaign posted a video of an encounter he had with Jacquelyn Brittany, a security guard who had escorted the candidate to the Times boardroom for his interview. Brittany returned during the Democratic convention to nominate Biden, a story of her aides forwarded to The Washington Post.
Within Biden’s campaign, his catchphrase: “I’m not dead and I’m not going to die!” — became something of an internal mantra, an expression of how strongly aides felt they were approaching an election in which they were never accorded the respect they were due.
So for me, it was especially interesting to see how White House officials recently began to embrace “Dark Brandon,” a palimpsest of an Internet meme that has been painted with almost impenetrable layers of irony on line.
Stay with me here as I try to explain it briefly.
The clean roots of “Dark Brandon”
The series of memes, according to sites that track these thingshas gone from sarcastic jokes about Biden’s alleged dementia to, now, a bear hug from the same team that still follows the maxim “Twitter is not real life.”
It began in the winter as an ironic appropriation of “Let’s Go Brandon,” a right-wing slogan that developed from a TV commentator’s misinterpretation of what the crowd at a NASCAR race was saying about Biden (hint: a rude insult). ) in an entire ecosystem of bumper stickers and t-shirts.
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The repackaging of the slogan “Brandon” was soon combined with the “Dark MAGA” meme.which had become popular among conservatives online and roughly conveys the message that Trump and his most loyal supporters are planning a vengeful comeback.
Highly stylized images of the current president with an otherworldly glow or red laser beams shooting from his eyes, often including Biden’s catchphrases like “No malarkey,” began appearing on meme factories like 4Chan, a Internet messaging or Twitter. .
At the time, Biden was struggling to get his agenda passed on Capitol Hill. But as the president began racking up legislative victories and favorable jobs numbers, Democratic Twitterati began to abandon the irony and embrace the meme wholeheartedly.
The White House jumped on board earlier this month, with several aides tweeting images of Dark Brandon after a series of good news for Biden:
Inside the White House, Dark Brandon’s towel-splitting tweets were an expression of a changing mood after months and months of being dogged by coverage of Biden’s dismal poll numbers, his struggles to tame inflation and the predilection among Beltway pundits to prematurely declare Biden’s policy. disappearance
The president himself has seen some of Dark Brandon’s memes and found them amusing, according to several people close to him.
“The Dark Brandon memes are a light-hearted glimpse into the fact that Biden actually has abilities and powers that most elected officials don’t have, and he’s giving it his own way,” said Greg Schultz, who ran Biden’s campaign on 2020 in the Democratic primaries. and has occasionally been critical of the White House.
And they also served to make fun of the extreme right-wing Extremely Online, whose obsession with concepts like “memetic war” has indelibly shaped the political conversation in this country and beyond.
Above all, the memes were a subtle reminder to the press that, collectively, Biden doesn’t always get it right, and that, according to his staff, the president is playing a long game that doesn’t always match the frenetic rhythms of the election cycle. internet news
The president nodded to those sentiments Tuesday during the signing ceremony of the Inflation Reduction Act. As Manchin stood behind him in the White House state dining room, hovering near the ceremonial table used for such occasions, the president said, “Joe, I’ve never had a doubt.”
For now, much of this mood swing is still what Gen Z folks might call “vibes.”
Biden’s poll numbers are upbut not much
Tuesday’s election results in Alaska and Wyoming suggest Donald Trump remains the most powerful force in Republican politics and, at least as of today, would enter a hypothetical 2024 rematch against Biden with his party firmly in the behind
Inflation may have peaked, but it remains at or near record highs, and it remains to be seen how today’s voters will process the changing narrative in Washington in November. Republicans can still win significant numbers of centrist voters with their arguments on cultural issues like transgender rights or the teaching of race and gender in schools.
Biden’s allies are also painfully aware of how fickle the conversation around the president can be.
“I promise,” Schultz said. “In six months, a lot of the media and the D.C. elite will be complaining about Biden again.”
what to read
—Blake
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