Learnings from Late Stage American Democracy

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I didn't publish anything last week due to the fact that nearly all of you were likely checked out or well on your way, which means that not much was happening from a company perspective either. Even in this minute-by-minute newscycle we live in, there are slow periods, and last week was one of them. If only there were something that happened that has everyone talking and speculating....

Oh, that's right.

Yes, I am going to weigh in on the most infamous debate performance in American history. No, I am not going to recap what happened on that night, or what should happen going forward. Enough people have done that and continue to do so. That said, How this has played out in the last 10+ days from a comms perspective specifically has been fascinating, and I want to focus on a few things we might be able to learn from and apply to our companies and clients. So, no Winners and Losers this week, just learnings from an ever-evolving train wreck.

On the night of the debate, I made a conscious choice to not watch the spectacle, and instead chose to go to Gen X church (i.e., our pickleball club) to play in a tournament. I did listen to the first ten minutes on the radio, however, and upon parking, sent this text to my wife and friends:

Again, this was ten minutes into the debate, and based on an audio-only experience. I guess from reading this you actually can understand what my personal opinions are, and that iPhone autocorrects "Biden" to "Niren". Which maybe makes Apple the loser of the week, but that's a topic for a different discussion. The learning here -- tone and body language are everything. Words hardly matter if the message isn't projected nonverbally. Trump spent the better part of the night spewing gobbledegook and lies. Most people are in agreement that Biden was worse. And even without watching, the narrative around the President's performance was being set in concrete. For those who watched, the narrative was even more strongly set. This has always been true in televised presidential debates, going back to the very first one in 1960, when a haggard, sweaty, pale Nixon got smoked by a youthful, vibrant JFK, according to the people who watched on TV.

And as we all know by now, "firestorm" didn't do the reaction justice. Going into a holiday week, it was all anyone could talk about. Terrible timing for the Biden campaign, which needs to make this election a referendum on Trump. Great timing for the Trump campaign, which needs to make it about Biden. And, at least for him, Trump has stayed relatively silent this week. Which brings me to the next learning - when your opponent is digging his own grave, don't interrupt him. No need to pile on.

The administration certainly did itself no favors with its post-debate strategy. Within hours, news started to leak out that congressional Dems were freaking out, thinking about the impact on down ballot races. Soon, that turned into a newscycle about the campaign not doing outreach to them to reassure them that there was a recovery plan in place. And a President who grew up in Congress and had firm control on his party soon found himself with a credibility issue among his own supporters. The whispers quickly turned to on-the-record comments, and the number of important Dems calling on the President to bow out, grew. In large part because those very same allies of the President felt they were being kept in the dark, without the chance to engage with Biden directly. This seemed like an easy mistake to avoid for the campaign, but the delay in outreach just created more suspicion among his allies. The learning here? When an important audience is openly asking for an explanation or reassurances, it's already too late. Something goes sideways, reach out sooner versus later.

By July 3rd, as everyone was going on holiday, the single most interesting thing in this whole debacle occurred. The Biden campaign had already begun speaking to supporters and allies, trying to reassure them that this was survivable and that he wasn't going to drop out. Then the NYT dropped a bombshell -- a very close Biden ally, who had been granted a conversation with the President, leaked it immediately to the paper that Biden told him directly that his situation might be untenable, and he might need to drop from the ticket. To those of us who understand how leaks work, it had all the markings of a classic "I'm going to tell you something and we are giving you tacit permission to leak the conversation to a reporter." Which makes it all the more curious why the White House would vehemently deny anything of the sort in the same story and then harden their defiance. Maybe it was a trial balloon being floated. But I can't imagine a close ally burning this President when he/she would be so easily identifiable. The learning here? If you are going to use leaks to run an idea up the flagpole, temper your on-the-record comments denying it ever happened.

I'm not saying that a handful of strategic communications errors have led us to where we are today, but I am certain that the steps the campaign has taken in the last 10+ days haven't helped. As of today, we see that more close allies than ever calling for President Biden to step down. And just this morning, another massive shoe dropped -- the New York Times editorial board , which many consider to be the in-house party organ for elite Democrats, called on the President to drop out in no uncertain terms. And we are at the precipice. On one side, we have a party that was once firmly behind the President in open rebellion. And we have a President that now has quadrupled down with a level of defiance that doesn't appear to be supported by his performance in the handful of post-debate media interviews and public events he's done.

I can't even begin to pretend that I would know how to fix this. The whole thing just makes me sad. And scared for the future. So now I guess you do know where I stand.

I'm Hani Durzy, president and founder of Red Dog Strategies, a senior level communications consultancy. We fulfill fractional and interim comms lead needs; handle distinct and specific projects around crisis comms, corporate narrative development, M&A/financial communications, change management, and building editorial content capabilities to augment storytelling; and execute "wellness check" assessments of existing comms programs to unlock the power of the function. If you want to talk, please reach out at [email protected] .