DNC Coverage: Healthcare
The first two nights of the DNC have reflected a balancing act of sorts for the Biden campaign: can he win crossover Republican votes without losing the progressive left who were decidedly not in his camp during the Democratic presidential primary? Bernie Sanders spoke on the opening night, but so did four Never Trump Republicans. The first night also featured a number of testimonies from voters who said that they regretted their vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
Day 2 opened with a montage of 17 (!) keynote speakers representing the “next generation of party leaders,” and though it was a very diverse group of young Democrats, not one had endorsed Sanders during the primaries. The virtual format has helped the Democratic Party present a unified front - in sharp contrast to 2016 - but there have still been some signs of intraparty disagreement on social media. Young activists took to Twitter heading into night 2, for example, calling on Democrats to #LetAOCSpeak, after hearing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would only be speaking briefly to second Sanders’ nomination at the convention. (Ocasio-Cortez would take to Twitter later that night explaining her participation and then again the next day to call out NBCNews for a misleading tweet, which the news outlet subsequently edited).
No doubt, the progressive left is quite active on Twitter, leading Democratic Party operatives and some news commentators to note that “Twitter is not real life.” New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote last year, “Left-wing Twitter isn’t a microcosm of the Democratic Party. It’s just a small, noisy fraction of it.”
In some ways, this is an overstatement. The issue priorities expressed on social media are pretty similar to those reported in our first nationally representative public opinion survey. Democrats identify healthcare, the economy, and racial equality as top issues in the 2020 election, and there is little difference in issue priorities among Democrats who are frequently on Twitter and those who don’t use the social media platform. These issues are also the same ones that dominated social media discussion about the Democratic presidential primary.
But there are also some notable differences. Healthcare is a good example. While it is the case that healthcare is a top issue for Democrats and has been one of the most frequently referenced issues in our Issue Tracker, a closer look reveals a clear bias towards the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party on Twitter, with Medicare-for-all dominating social media discussion throughout the Democratic presidential primary.
Healthcare was back in the spotlight on day 2 of the DNC. Ady Barkan, a progressive activist who was diagnosed with ALS in 2016 and has become a popular national advocate for Medicare-for-all, gave a powerful speech demanding access to quality healthcare and endorsing Joe Biden for president. Barkan had previously thrown his support behind Senator Elizabath Warren and had called out Biden last year for being the only Democratic candidate who hadn’t accepted his invitation to talk about healthcare.
What were the online reactions to Barkan’s speech last night? Did it open the wounds between progressive activists demanding Medicare-for-all and centrist Democrats looking to campaign on defending and shoring up Obamacare? Throughout the Democratic presidential primary, we observed very little attention to Obamacare/Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Twitter. Calls for Medicare-for-all just dominated all other healthcare discussion.
Tracking the healthcare-related tweets posted during night 2 of the DNC suggests that Democrats may be focusing on the ACA again, looking to campaign on healthcare in much the same way that they did in the 2018 midterm elections. To be sure, calls for Medicare-for-all have not disappeared on Twitter - far from it. But as we head into the general election, we expect to hear a lot more about Obamacare, both on social media and off.
Tweets referencing either Obamacare (ACA) or Medicare-for-all during night 2 of the DNC
Number of tweets and retweets referencing either Obamacare (ACA) or Medicare-for-all
during night 2 of the DNC.