Lessons for Biden Vs. Trump from the 1988 Election That Changed Modern Politics
During almost every new election cycle, the media tries to find parallels with past elections, as if any election is truly predictable (especially after the shocking results of November 2016). Most frequently, the elections of yesteryear that come up in comparison with 2020 are 1968, due to President Donald Trump´s law and order tactics and appeal to working white class voters through veiled racism, both of which seem ripped out of the winning playbook of Richard Nixon´s campaign, and 2004, in which a relatively unpopular Republican incumbent who did not win the popular vote (George W. Bush) faced a milquetoast Democratic candidate who generated little enthusiasm, John Kerry. In both those moments, amid a deeply divided electorate and heated social topics (in both cases there was a raging war in a distant nation going on), the Republican candidate won. Due to this fact, many Democratic voters, especially those from the progressive wing who would have preferred Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as the standard bearer for their party, are worried that Biden will go the way of Hubert Humphrey (the candidate literally handpicked by the DNC rather than the voters in 1968, just as many claim has happened during the last two elections) and Kerry.
However, in many ways, the 1988 Election, the same one in which Biden himself was very briefly a candidate, offers more explicit parallels. 1988 was a relatively stable year economically and socially, true, especially in comparison to this year´s COVID pandemic and the George Floyd protests. In addition, clearly, Trump is nothing like that year´s Republican nominee and eventual victor, George H.W. Bush; in fact, the highly qualified and experienced, but rather tedious and uninspiring in his rhetoric Bush was in many ways the anthesis of Trump´s shocking, almost surreal ascendency to the United States Presidency. However, apart from the outlier of Trump, a President who can´t truly be compared to any other, there were many trends that essentially debuted in 1988 that would become the norm for U.S. elections ever since.
Biden, conversely, seems like an odd hybrid of Bush and Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, sharing the extensive experience in Washington (both were Vice Presidents serving alongside popular Presidents) of Bush and the safe, ¨electable¨ blandness of Dukakis. Time will tell if he will have the electoral fate of the former or the latter, but for now we can analyze the 1988 Election to see its impact on contemporary election cycles, as well as to more accurately predict this year´s results.
An Unpopular Republican Nominee, and A Whole Slew of Democrats Who Can´t Beat Him
The 2020 Election, long before Biden became the nominee, saw by far the highest number of candidates officially in the running than any other previous election, with more than 25 when all was said and done. This reflects the urgency of the party, who desperately wanted to end Trump´s reign and start anew.. or in the case of Biden, return to the Obama years. In 1988, there was a similar intensity within the party to return to the White House after a worrying drought. Between the 1968 and 1988 Elections, only one candidate had managed to win the Presidency, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, and this was largely due to the sour taste of the Watergate scandal rather than any specific merits of the little-known Governor, who would serve just one term and be known, even within his own party, as an ineffectual leader.
George H.W. Bush, on paper, seemed like a strong candidate due to his association with the hugely popular, outgoing Ronald Reagan, who famously even convinced many Democrats to pull the lever on R during his landslide victory against Carter´s Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984. However, the elder Bush´s lack of bluster and zest on the campaign trail, not to mention his failure to distinguish himself from his boss, made it appear to the press and Democratic insiders that perhaps 1988 was finally the Democrats´ moment.
However, many of the candidates were just retreads from 1984, all of who had lost to the less-than-inspiring Mondale: charismatic, relatively youthful Colorado Senator Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, the first serious African-American candidate for President, and former ¨Right Stuff¨ NASA astronaut and Ohio Senator John Glenn. Adding to the diverse mix were Biden and Al Gore, both of whom gained little traction, but who of course would become more well known as Vice Presidents and subsequent nominees of their party in future years. For a short while, Hart was the man to beat, with a telegenic quality and eloquence that called to mind John F. Kennedy. Just as Pete Buttigieg and Warren had their moments in the media spotlight during this year´s cycle, Hart was prematurely anointed the frontrunner, before a tawdry media scandal destroyed his campaign before 1987 even ended (as will be profiled in the next section).
Briefly, Jackson, with his leftist views and passionate followers, seemed to capture the most loyalty and fervor, and was poised to improve on his 1984 showing, in a very similar fashion to Bernie Sanders´ brief resurgence during the initial primary elections this year. However, it was the moderate, ¨sensible¨ ideology of an uninteresting but out of central casting Democrat, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who eventually ended up victorious. The drama and twists and turns of a clown car of candidates trying in vain to win against a relatively beatable candidate contain surprising and concerning parallels to this year´s election.
Media: Attack Ads and Scandals
The mass media, believe it or not, used to have a relatively subdued role in the election process. In 1960, the television-ready, glamorous Kennedy benefited from the emergence of the then-relatively new medium as a factor in choosing candidates, and Reagan, as a former movie star, certainly had the upper hand against Carter. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, such as the infamous 1964 ¨Daisy¨Ad used by the Lyndon Johnson campaign against his opponent Barry Goldwater, the glut of election-related TV spots every 4 years had generally focused more on the individual candidates´ strengths rather than their opponents´ weaknesses. This all changed in 1988 thanks to the efforts of Bush´s campaign director Lee Atwater, who saturated the airwaves with vicious, race-baiting attacks that pegged Dukakis as a soft-on-crime weakling who let the beautiful city of Boston become a contaminated wasteland and was not fit for President.
Most of all, the racism-tinged advertisements focusing on Willie Horton, a convicted (African-American) murder who was allegedly let on parole by Dukakis, and led a flurry of fear-minded voters to change their mind about the MA Governor, are eerily similar to Trump´s anti-immigrant rants and fear-mongering propaganda that have been a hallmark of his initial candidacy and his Presidency in general. In fact, the origin of Trump´s shift from reality TV celebrity and real estate tycoon to Presidential aspirant started during the Obama re-election campaign in 2011, as the New York developer stoked the dueling fires of racism and xenophobia by claiming repeatedly that the Hawaii-born President was born in Kenya. In both cases, this race-focused approach to lure voters away from the Democratic opponent proved to be effective, even if both campaigns used more overt tactics than Nixon´s aforementioned ¨Southern Strategy¨ in the late 60s.
Even before Bush and Dukakis duked it out head to head in the balmy summer of 1988, the initial salvo of the wild campaign in 1987 started out with two media-fueled scandals, which, years earlier, wouldn´t have seen the light of day. Biden, with 15 years as a well-known, centrist Senator from Delaware under his belt, seemed like a strong candidate upon the start of his campaign in the spring of ´87, but soon burned out due to allegations of plagiarism, as several aspects of his speeches and even his official campaign biography were found to be lifted from the life of British politician Neil Kinnock. Meanwhile, Hart seemed to be invincible that year, as his name recognition thanks to his previous campaign, excess of charm, and Progressive-Centrist policies made him an endearing figure.
However, rumors began popping up that he was unfaithful to his wife, a private aspect of the Presidency that was covered up during the Presidencies of FDR and JFK, but in a new, tabloid-driven age, was suddenly ripe for coverage. The Miami Herald famously staked out in South Florida while Hart partied on a yacht ironically emblazoned with the moniker ¨Monkey Business,¨ and a relatively innocent photo of a woman sitting on the married Hart´s lap essentially derailed his campaign.
These private lapses, rather than political corruption a la Watergate, were considered before this momentous election to be minor failings that not in any way disqualified a Presidential candidate. Yet, in the following cycles, Presidential candidates failed due to numerous personal flaws, such as Herman Cain´s alleged sexual harassment in 2011 and Hillary Clinton´s use of personal emails in the last election. Interestingly, Bill Clinton and Trump both faced sex-related scandals but managed to win the Presidency. Biden, who already had weathered the plagiarism scandal and has committed numerous gaffes over decades of public prominence, seemed to hit a snag with the allegations of former aide Tara Reade, but for now both candidates unusually seem shielded from their misdeeds.
In the 1988 election, the newfangled presence of 24- hour networks like CNN seemed to be the culprit of this intense media glare, but in the 21st Century, the Internet is now driving the endless scrutiny. Whether it be Trump with his infamous tweets or Biden with his online talk show blunders about race, all the negativity and trashy sensationalism has been amplified, to an extent greater than in ´88, thanks to the omnipresence of the web.
Don´t Trust The Polls
The most significant (and most obvious) lesson we can learn from the outcome of the 1988 Election is the fact that the Democrats cannot take polls in the summer for granted, even if the lead of their candidate seems insurmountable. During these unprecedented times of Coronavirus, it is unclear (and unlikely) if we will even have traditional conventions this year, although it seems that the RNC is planning to forge ahead in Jacksonsville, even as cases surge exponentially in Florida. In ´88, the conventions for the Republican and Democratic parties took place, respectively, in New Orleans and Atlanta, and following Dukakis´speech as nominee for the DNC, he seemed like the man to beat, leading Bush by a whopping 17 points in national polls. Yet, the less than four months that separated Dukasis´ spirited speech on a hot summer night in Georgia and his humiliating defeat are an eternity in electoral politics, and for that reason, pundits who assume Biden is a shoo-in due to current polls are kidding themselves.
After all, Clinton similarly led in the polls (although by a lesser margin), and although she indeed narrowly won the popular vote, she was ultimately defeated in the electoral college. Biden currently leads by a higher margin than Clinton did, and he seems to have a higher favorability rating. However, his relative silence in recent months due to the pandemic is likely to have helped him, and as the campaign amps up in the next few months, his tendency to put his foot in his mouth might ruin his chances. If Biden can learn anything from Dukakis´ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory more than 30 years ago, it´s from his two major misfires in the months leading up to a fateful Tuesday in early November.
Most infamously (and perhaps most frivolously), Dukakis attempted to subvert his image as a staid, soft-on-crime liberal by showing up in a tank. Although a similarly macho, patriotic PR move proved to be successful 15 years later for George W. Bush, it simply was not a good look for the Governor, and he was mocked by the media and voters not just for the following weeks and months, but years. In October, with less than a month to go and Dukakis´ advantage in the polls diminishing fast, he had one more chance to win back his lead by crushing Bush in the debate. Instead, almost immediately, the ¨Duke¨ confirmed his reputation as a stiff, cold, clinical policy wonk when (quite inappropriately) asked if he would support the death penalty in the event of his wife being raped and murdered.
Rather than an emotional appeal, as expected after such a loaded, personal question, Dukakis rattled off statistics backing up his policy on capital punishment in a robotic fashion and did not even mention his wife. The election was essentially over at that point. Biden, who did quite well against his younger opponents in the Vice Presidential debates of 2008 and 2012, has become a tongue-tied shell of his former self, and he was likely helped by the fact that the debates this cycle were so overcrowded. Biden has a very likely chance to blow it in the debates, even as Clinton´s impressive performances the last go-around could not eke out an electoral college victory.
The 1988 Election was known as an overwhelmingly negative, disheartening experience for the voters, no matter the outcome. It also helped lead to the current cutthroat electoral climate, and the drastic drop in popularity of the Democratic candidate offers a stark warning for those counting Trump out and assuming that the current, exceptional events will spell an inevitable victory for the former veep Biden. As Dukakis will tell you, it ain´t over ´til it´s over, and it won´t be until November until we know if Biden was able to learn his lesson from past candidates.
