A Tale of Two Candidates: Biden v. Sanders
Former Vice President Joe Biden entered the 2020 presidential race today after months of speculation. Most polling has him in the #1 spot, following by Senator Bernie Sanders. There are a lot of differences between the two frontrunners who have both had very long political careers. Those differences are clearly reflected in their campaign launch videos. Granted, these video are relatively short advertisements (3.5 minutes for Biden and 2 minutes for Sanders); a longer, in-depth comparison is clearly required, but watching the two videos side by side can give voters a good idea of the philosophy and style of these two candidates.
The two videos can be seen here. The key difference that jumps out right away is the amount of policy substance. In his two minute long video, Senator Sanders’ advertisement lists the following specific policies: medicare for all, tuition-free public colleges, the green new deal, $15 minimum wage, ending the U.S role in the war on Yemen, supporting DACA, comprehensive immigration reform. He also brought up several issues he wants to address, such as income inequality, women’s rights, and campaign finance reform, though he did not list a specific policy proposal for these. Sanders also made he case that real change is bottom-up, created by the actions of large numbers of individual citizens coming together, which is more of a governing philosophy than a policy, but is a key difference in the way he campaigns and plans to govern, if elected.
Biden’s advertisement was almost the exact opposite. In the 3.5 minutes, not a single policy was mentioned. The video focused on Trump’s absurd response to the white supremacist march in Charlottesville back in back in 2017. Much like the Hillary Clinton campaign ads back in 2016, Biden hammered home the idea that Trump was vital threat to the American way of life by giving safe home to hatred. Biden essentially argued that he will be the anti-Trump, restoring American values and saving the soul of the nation.
Of course, none of this is the say that Biden does not or will not have policy positions during the race. Often campaign’s start off with policy-free statements and the issues are laid out later. That said, Biden has been in politics for decades and has been hinting at entering this race for months; he really shouldn’t need time to figure out what policies he plans to enact if elected. His decision, similar to most of the the other candidates, to announce his candidacy sans policy highlights a huge difference between the two candidates. Despite being attacked for a cultish fan base, Bernie’s support is largely linked to his policy platform as opposed to his personality. When he decided to announce, his #1 priority was to articulate the policies he would like to enact. Rather than making the argument against Trump, he made an argument for a series of bold policy alternatives that, in his opinion, would uplift working people and make America more democratic and equitable. For now,Biden is running almost entirely on his affable personality and the fact that he was Obama’s Vice President and the promise restore the pre-Trump status quo.
