There’s an interesting parallel between Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 Democratic primary and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Republican primary. Both ran weak campaigns that managed, through completely different means, to dominate “free” media coverage when it mattered most. And that free coverage outweighed all their election efforts’ floundering in other areas—fundraising, advertising, volunteer support, strategic communication choices. Their shared success, despite their glaring limitations, suggests that the general election will probably be decided by which candidate is better able to manipulate the topics that the mainstream media chooses to cover. That’s true even in the modern era of microtargeted advertising and social-media-enabled disinformation; and it’s particularly relevant as we begin to imagine what electoral campaigns will look like in the midst of (or, hopefully, the aftermath of) the Covid-19 pandemic.
Biden’s victory is, on one level, entirely unsurprising. He is the immediate past vice president, reminding Democratic voters of a time that they would very much like to return to. He led in national polls throughout the race. He performed poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, but it took only one victory in South Carolina for him to consolidate the support of party leadership and build real momentum. But that’s too simple of an explanation. It conflates the Biden candidacy with the Biden campaign. Joe Biden’s candidacy was strong. His campaign wasn’t.
There are a few measurable activities that we generally associate with strong campaigns. They identify supporters, raise money, make headlines, frame the debate, knock on doors, make phone calls, and turn people out to vote. Biden’s did virtually none of those things. Mike Bloomberg spent an unprecedented $500 million on advertising and field campaigning; Biden’s campaign was on the brink of running out of money. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar all had memorable debate moments that seized public attention; Biden’s debate performances were cringe-inducing at worst, forgettable at best. Bernie Sanders spent five years building a massive grassroots movement, and built momentum with early victories; Biden barely had field offices in several Super Tuesday states and won elections where he hadn’t bothered to campaign. Biden came out on top because he captured the media narrative at just the right time. A string of prominent endorsements fueled a tidal wave of enthusiastic media coverage. That free media attention proved more powerful than Sanders’ legion of well-organized grassroots supporters or Bloomberg’s limitless checkbook.
Trump, like Biden, barely spent on advertisements during the Republican primary. Trump, like Biden, didn’t build much of a campaign organization in the early primaries. But Trump received an estimated $2 billion in free m