US Democratic Party Campaign Strategy Adjustmentunder the Background of Political Polarization
作者: Wang Lianhe
With the US 2024 electionyear already in sight, thecampaign of the Democrat- ic Party has drawn wide attention from the media and academia. Shortly after former President Trump announced his White House bid for 2024, Presi- dent Biden officially announced his 2024 re-election bid. In the face of a possible “Biden V.S. Trump version 2.0”, the campaign strategy of the Demo- cratic Party has been a hot topic.
US DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAMPAIGN STRATEGY ADJUSTMENT
Since 2010, American political po- larization has intensified. During the Biden administration, the implication and manifestation of political polariza- tion in the United States continued to expand, leading up to frequent con- frontation on all fronts. In this context, the Democratic Party has vigorously adjusted its campaign strategy to adapt to the changing political logic and maximize its advantages in the election.
First is to highlight “identity” as the mainstay of the campaign. Judg- ing from the development of “identity politics” in the United States, the Dem- ocratic Party has long played a leading role and benefited a lot from it. Faced with challenges on “identity politics” from the rise of American right-wing conservatives, the Democratic Party has gradually gone deeper into the core of “identity politics” in itselectioncampaigns, lending more emphasis to “identity” in its campaign, and pacing up the transformation from “identity politics” to “identity”. Unlike “identity politics”, which focuses on equality, “identity” calls for attention to issues of deeper cultural value, and works better to propel individuals or groups to get involved in politics and fight for their rights and interests.
Second is to interfere with the Republican primaries. With the inten- sification of party struggle, the Demo- crats take a indirect approach. They carefully selected competent candi- dates for the party, while heavy-hand- edly interfering with the Republican primaries helping their “problematic” rivals to stand out in the primaries so as to increase their own odds in the final round. During the mid-term elec- tion in 2022, the Democratic political organizations such as the Democratic Governors Association invested more than 53 million US dollars to inter- vene in 13 Republican primaries in 9 states. Judging from the results, the Democratic Party’sadventurousstrat- egy has made great achievements, which has aborted the Republican plan of a “red wave”.
Third is to leverage the advantages of social media. The first part of the so- cial media campaign is about political propaganda. Through social software such as X, Meta, YouTube and Insta- gram, Democratic candidates directly and quickly publicized information on policies, plans and campaign activities.The second part is targeted advertise- ment delivery. The Democratic Party’s campaign team makes full use of the algorithmic function of social media advertising platform to accurately de- liver feeds to voters with certain politi- cal stand and interests. The third part is to influence public opinion. The Democrats create relevant hash tags and feeds to create favorable public opinion for the campaign.
Fourth is to use “wedge issues” to beef up their campaign.“Wedge issues” can easily make people emo- tional, and have become an important yardstick to distinguish the ideologies of the Democrats and Republicans and a key tool to consolidate their respec- tive support base. The first is the issue of abortion. With the overthrow of Roe v Wade, the Democratic Party made a big fuss about abortion to stokedis- content among voters. The second is the issue of gun control. In 2022, many large-scale shootings broke out in the United States, which triggered protests across the country. President Biden signed the “Bipartisan Safer Commu- nities Act” as strongly commended by gun control advocates. The third issue is democracy. The Democratic Party has portrayed itself as a spokesman for American democracy and repeat- edly warned voters of the threat posed by Trump and the Republican Party to US democracy.
Fifth is to copy the “Abrams Model” in the campaign. In 2020 and 2022, Stacey Abrams, a political activist of the Democratic Party of Georgia, helped the Democratic Party win the presidential election and the Senate election in the state, which turned Georgia “blue” for the first time since 1992. The “Abrams Model” emphasizes mobilizing young voters, rural voters and ethnic minority voters through social media and digital marketing to reverse the election situation. Nowa- days, in the face of increasingly polar- ized electoral politics, progressives within the Democratic Party and po- litical groups such as “Path to Victory” call for copying the “Abrams Model” in order to reproduce the miracle of the 2020 general election and the mid- term election in 2022.
SOCIAL AND POLITICALCONSIDERATIONS ON THEADJUSTMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
In recent years, the Democratic Party’s campaign strategy has gradu- ally gone from the traditional holistic approach where there is more empha- sis on the broad agenda and universal values to attract as many voters as pos- sible, to one that stresses on individual items on the overall agenda and speci- fied values, in order to mobilize the core group. This strategic adjustment reflects the profound changes in American social and political ecology.
I. The Influence of Political Po- larization
The political polarization in the United States has been intensifying since the 1970s, and it has reached the level of “super polarization” by the election year of 2016. In this context, the Democratic Party made a balance between traditional and new strategies in an effort to find the “optimal solu- tion” for the campaign. On the one hand, it pays more attention to voters’ cultural identity and identity politics issues with the aim to enhance voters’empathy and strengthen solidarity within the party. On the other hand, it makes active response to the actual needs of voters, puts forward more pragmatic policy programs, and at- tracts more support from swing voters.