I’m watching A Biden speech in Michigan from a few days ago. At 52:00 he starts talking about the recent Woodward tape where Trump admits knowledge of the pandemic danger. During this phase of his speech he sounds fiery and passionate and it’s because he’s ANGRY at Trump’s failures.
More importantly he sounds confident and authoritative when he speaks angrily. Whenever he tries to talk in a friendly, buddy-buddy tone, or the “soft-spoken, sober, responsible” tone, he usually comes off really awkwardly, stumbles, hesitates, and sounds like he lacks conviction. However when he digs into attack mode, Biden sounds WAY more compelling.
I think Biden needs to lean into his “angry bastard” side, moving forward in the campaign. Because I really like this side of him more than anything else I’ve seen in the past year.
The Dems often have a problem that they’re afraid to be themselves and Biden needs to do whatever makes him come across as the most natural. Also, in this election I’m not even convinced being nice is going to appeal to the marginal voters. I think Trump stole a lot of would-be Dem voters in 2016 because he was an outlet for their anger.
Soooo… maybe. Shortly after the 2016 election we had Biden as a keynote speaker at a conference. His speech started off as the standard “former politician tells anecdotes and gives sage advice” type of affair that is typical in these situations. But then he started to get mad. Really mad. He was presenting in front of 3K people in the banking industry and he started tearing into them. Although I myself have made a living in this industry, quietly I was loving him taking them to task but objectively it was a really dumb thing for him to do. He forgot why he was there and turned his audience against him completely.
So anytime I hear people talking about Joe needs to be more angry I think of that experience and how horribly bad it went for everyone involved.
Maybe, but that’s a specific audience. Biden on the campaign trail is largely speaking to the American public at large, and frankly, bankers deserve to take some shit, so that’ll win him votes.
Let’s say that, at one of his debates with Trump, Biden gets asked about how the last candidate who ran against Trump said that, what, tens of millions of voters are not only deplorable but irredeemable, right? So, my question to you, Mister Vice-President: would you agree that tens of millions of voters are irredeemably deplorable?
“OK, first of all, forget about Hillary Clinton. She obviously couldn’t get it done and it was a stupid thing to say. Hillary’s out of the picture. I’m running a different kind of campaign and I have a different attitude. NOBODY is deplorable just because of who they vote for. What’s deplorable are bad ideas that are sold to the American public as being good ideas - sold by people with billions of dollars to their name and nothing to lose, while American citizens are struggling to make ends meet and factories are gathering dust and rust. Nobody does something without a reason. People felt that they had a reason to vote for Donald Trump. Well now, I’m going to give you a reason to vote for ME. [proceeds to explain numerous reasons].”
Biden needs better stage and on-camera management. He needs someone to coach him on how to walk off the airplane and in other places - he takes short steps like an unsteady 90-year old who’s trying to find his walker. He needs to stay out of sunlight and bright lights that require him to squint his eyes.
But what he really needs is better outreach with Latino voters. I see him reaching out to women, to Blacks, and whites in key states, but he’s not really inspiring Latino voters.