The Biden White House is recruiting hundreds of social media influencers to promote the alleged accomplishments of the administration. This move is in hopes of enticing the youngest voters to vote for Joe Biden. Will it work?
These influencers will be given star treatment in the White House, likely with a briefing room all their own. Four, count ’em, four, Biden digital staffers are assigned to focus on influencers and independent content creators. The staffers work for the White House, not the Biden campaign, though so that might get a little sketchy. Clearly, the White House is bringing them on to help Sleepy Joe campaign. The campaign will have election law to contend with in its dealings with the White House. The two operations are supposed to be kept separate.
The goal is to reach young and suburban voters, especially swing suburban women voters, who get a majority of their news through social media. Biden dipped into the world of social media influencers during the 2020 campaign when he stayed in his basement and let others come to him via Zoom. His daughter Ashley arranged Zoom chats live-streamed with Cardi B, for example, and that was mostly a fiasco. What does an 80-year-old politician have to talk about with a 30-year-old female rapper when it comes to current events? She kept calling him “Biden”, thinking that was his first name. This was at the time when her song with Megan Thee Stallion, titled WAP, was popular. No, I’m not saying what those letters stand for, look it up yourself. Hardly appropriate or dignified for a presidential candidate, or an old geezer.
The White House is pulling out all the stops, according to Axios. Not only is it talking about the influencers having their own briefing room inside the White House but a digital strategist, Rob Flaherty, has been named assistant to the president. That is the same rank as the White House press secretary and the communications director. The rise in importance is likely due to the fact that though young voters went with Biden by 26 points over Trump in 2020, and Democrats over Republicans by 28 points in the 2022 midterm elections, Team Biden is at a disadvantage. Trump has a clear advantage on social media because of the number of followers he has across the platforms.
Social media platforms shut Trump down because of his broad reach, not just because of his message. He reaches millions and millions of followers. He’s been reinstated on Twitter though he has not used it since then. He has far fewer followers on Truth Social than on Twitter. It remains to be seen if he will move back to Twitter during the campaign or if he is contractually obligated to remain exclusively at Truth Social. Joe Biden can’t compete with Trump on Twitter. So, his team has moved to the influencers.
“We’re trying to reach young people, but also moms who use different platforms to get information and climate activists and people whose main way of getting information is digital,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, White House deputy chief of staff.
The details: Hundreds of (unpaid and like-minded) content creators are working with Biden’s White House. They include:
Read Related Also: Who Is Christian Velez From Spring Baking Championship? Wikipedia Age And Family
Harry Sisson, a 20-year-old NYU student who breaks down the day’s news on TikTok;
Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has a widely read Substack and huge Twitter following,
And Vivian Tu, a former trader who discusses financial topics in short clips on TikTok and Instagram.
Influencers will have access to Joe Biden in the White House and across the country on the road during events. The White House is building regional relationships with influencers in local media outlets as it does with traditional media.
One sticking point is that these influencers use TikTok. It comes at a time when Congress is working to curtail the use of TikTok due to national security concerns. The feeble old man in the White House continues to use it in the White House with influencers which makes him look out of step with members of both political parties who are working on the issue of Chinese data gathering on Americans, particularly minors. The Big Guy doesn’t seem concerned. If he isn’t concerned about national security on the porous southern border, why do we expect him to be concerned about national security and TikTok?
Biden still hasn’t announced his re-election bid yet. Why should he? As long as he keeps teasing about his “intention” to run, he doesn’t have to abide by campaign finance law and election laws. He can go about his merry way campaigning while not campaigning (wink, wink). No one is excited about Biden running for re-election, not even Democrats, so we’ll see if he can attract a large number of young voters in 2024.
