DNC Coverage: Biden/Sanders Unity
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will take the stage tonight to make the case that former vice president Joseph Biden should be the next president of the United States. Seven months ago, it was Sanders, not Biden, who was leading the pack of candidates vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Sanders had placed second in Iowa, won the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucus, and had the energy of a youthful movement pushing his candidacy forward. In February, at the height of his campaign, he pulled in $46.5 million, much of it from small-dollar donors, and more than what any other Democratic candidate raised in a month during the nomination battle.
But then came South Carolina at the end of February and the delegate-rich states on Super Tuesday in early March. Biden won all but four of the Super-Tuesday states, aided in part by the departure of Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, who both dropped out before Super Tuesday and quickly endorsed Biden.
Sanders ended his presidential bid in early April. The next month, Biden and Sanders announced the creation of a task force, bringing together key surrogates from their respective wings of the Democratic Party to create a set of policy recommendations that would unify Democrats.
No doubt Sanders and Biden disagreed on several key issues during the primaries. Sanders campaigned on Medicare-for-all; Biden continues to favor making changes to the existing healthcare system. Sanders supports the Green New Deal; Biden was criticized throughout the primaries by progressives who did not think his plans were aggressive enough to combat climate change. Both favor increasing the taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans, but Sanders’ tax plan was estimated to bring in $23 trillion more in tax revenue over 10 years compared to what Biden originally proposed during the Democratic primary.
In early July, the Biden-Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force released their policy recommendations for the Democratic platform. The 110-page document is divided into six issue areas: climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, healthcare and immigration. Each section was drafted by a team of eight people picked by Biden and Sanders. Although several of the recommendations shift Biden to the left of where he was during the Democratic primary, they do not include some of the policies favored by progressive activists and that Sanders campaigned on, including Medicare-for-all, cancellation of student debt, and tuition-free public college. But on other issues, including climate change, Biden has moved in Sanders’ direction.
If Biden’s proposed plans has shifted somewhat in Sanders’ direction, what about his campaign rhetoric? Do we see any evidence that Biden is trying to woo the progressive left? We’ve compared the tweets authored by Biden and Sanders over the course of 2020. Back in February, Biden tweeted the most about healthcare (20 percent). Since July, nearly half of his tweets have focused on the economy. Sanders, in comparison, was more likely than Biden to tweet about economic inequality and labor rights during the Democratic primary. (It’s been much the same since he ended his presidential run and endorsed Biden: these two issues are still centerpieces of Sanders’ political rhetoric.) But we find no evidence that Biden is more likely to talk about these issues now that he is the Democratic Party’s choice to take on President Donald Trump in November. If anything, Biden has placed less emphasis on economic inequality than when it looked like Sanders might be on track to secure the nomination.
Issues referenced in Biden’s Tweets, July 2020 versus February 2020
We were also curious about whether Biden and Sanders differ in how they talk about economic inequality. Earlier this year, our team of students coded all 11 of the Democratic debates, drawing on research demonstrating the diversity in which Americans think about economic difference. Some political elites, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, focus on those at the very top of the economic ladder to draw attention to the growing disparities between the very rich and the rest of Americans – a strategy that may help increase support for progressive policies. Sometimes, candidates focus on the opposite end of the ladder. Of the Democrats who launched presidential bids in 2019, Senator Cory Booker stands out as one who most frequently talked about those experiencing poverty. And, of course, political elites love to talk about the politically popular middle class.
Our students coded debate transcripts for references to the rich, poor, and middle class, and there were clear differences between Sanders and Biden. Not surprisingly, Sanders talked considerably more about economic inequality than Biden. But when the former vice president did discuss this issue, he was more likely to frame it in terms of the struggles facing the middle class, making fewer references, on average, to America’s rich or poor. Sanders, on the other hand, was most likely to reference the richest Americans—“the top one-tenth of 1 percent” as he would often note on the debate stage. The nation’s poor, however, were the least likely to be mentioned, by either Biden or Sanders. Indeed, as Washington Post columnist, Jonathan Capehart, recently noted: “Poverty rarely, if ever, gets discussed on the presidential campaign trail.”
As Biden accepts the Democratic Party nomination and continues into his general election campaign, will we see any changes in issue attention or campaign rhetoric? How will Biden speak to the millions of unemployed Americans, those facing the risk of eviction or foreclosure in the coming months, the parents struggling to care for their children while school buildings remained closed, or the nearly 54 percent of poor and low-income Americans who were eligible to vote but did not cast a ballot in 2016?
Average number of references about economic inequality per debate
Student team members who contributed to this report include Savannah Charles, Kaley Gilbert, and Emma Hazeltine.