Joe Biden could ride a return-to-normal campaign all the way to the White House, if his party lets him campaign that way.
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In 1920, with 60.3% of the popular vote and 76% of the Electoral Vote, Senator Warren Harding (R-OH) defeated Governor James Cox (D-OH), becoming President. Historians commonly cite the Harding administration as the end of the progressive era, and the start of the Republican decade known as the 1920s. A shift in American politics had started,
Harding did not even campaign.
Cut to a hundred years later, Vice President Biden cannot campaign. Social distancing orders in relation to the COVID-19 outbreak has made holding rallies nearly impossible. So no matter what, Biden will have to tap into some of that Harding energy. However, that is not the only way these two are similar.
The years of President Wilson were a chaotic time. Starting off with him only being elected due to supporters of President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to vote for the incumbent William Taft after Roosevelt tried to take the nomination in 1912. Roosevelt was a hardcore progressive, Taft was much more moderate. (Remind you of two people from the last election?)
It’s commonly believed the only reason the Democratic Party picked New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson was in hopes of taking away progressive voters who were considering backing Roosevelt’s 3rd Party run as a Progressive. It worked, and Wilson was elected to his first term in 1912, albeit with only 41.8% of the popular vote.
Wilson’s first term was one of chaos. From his anti-trust legislation, his implementation of an income tax, and his creation of the Federal Reserve banking system-just to name a few things. His second term was even worse. After Wilson defeated Supreme Court Justice Charles Hughes in 1916 on the platform that he kept us out of the war, he got the United States involved in World War One before his 2nd inauguration.
Wilson’s second term also gave us Alien and Sedition Laws, which he promised only to use during the war. This led to the arrests of many protesters, most famously Socialist Eugene Debs. Once the war ended, things still weren’t normal as you had Wilson and his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer going around deporting anyone they declared to be communists to Russia, which was recently taken over by Vladimir Lenin. Over in Congress, the President was boxing with Republicans, most notably Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, to get the United States into the failed League Of Nations.
Sounds like a lot to take in? It was, especially for those who were living through it. They voted for Harding in hopes that he would return things to normal, or at least, to a time where Americans weren’t dying in the trenches or being deported to Russia.
In his first show after the election, John Oliver, host of the HBO weekly show Last Week Tonight, wanted his audience to know “This is not normal.” “This is not normal,” became a popular motto among the early resistance, and one that Biden could capitalize on.
Tell me, is there any more stereotypical image of our politics than Joe Biden? He’s an old white guy who is about in the middle on every major political issue.
In truth, the American people have wanted a return to normal for a long time. But, the politicians have refused to give it to them.
I stand by my belief that the main reason Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 was her failure to tell us who she was. Someone who created the global economy, had a successful political career separate from her husband (who was formally the President), and became a pop culture icon all at the same time.
Why didn’t she point out she was in the room during the Bin Laden raid while Trump was tweeting in New York? It got to the point where she even denied some of her major accomplishments. During the third debate, Clinton claimed that she was against the Trans-Pacific Partnership despite her writing a large portion of it as Secretary of State under President Obama!
Mitt Romney made a similar mistake back in 2012. Tell me, why did Romney want to be President? Nobody, not even his staff, was sure. Hence why he had to “re-invent” himself at the Republican National Convention, and then do the same about a month later.
Romney never told the American people who he was. Instead of saying that he was a successful businessman and as such could run the economy better than some guy from Chicago, a point many Americans would agree with considering Obama was not very popular during his tenure, he put on jeans and declared himself a common man. (Which also means there’s a 47% chance he’s a moocher.)
In both these cases, the candidates refused to tell us who they were. As such, when the American people found out, or more than likely remembered, who they were, they felt betrayed. Romney was a wealthy businessman and Clinton was an insider with a thirty-year long political career. Neither of these spell doom for a candidate, but building your image around something you are simply not does.
Joe Biden is already going in the wrong direction. During his debates with Senator Sanders, Biden promised us that he was actually a better extremist than Sanders, because he gets things done!
This is not what Joe Biden should do. He should be running as a return to normal candidate after four years of the most chaotic administration in a long time.
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