A Swiss political scientist, who specializes, as a political consultant and academic, in divining the secrets of getting incumbents reelected and beating them, told RedState President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s own campaign for a second term is in severe trouble.
“If you are the incumbent, if you are the incumbent, you really have a opportunity to affect the media, to plan a campaign strategically in the long run–and the goal here is never make it a real race,” said Louis Perron, author of the new book “Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections.”
The political scientist said Biden’s trip to the border and effort to pass border security legislation is too close to the election to save him.
“Regarding the border, I would just give Republicans whatever they want,” Perron said.
“The issue is clearly a vulnerability for Biden, and if I were him, I would want to take it off the table,” he said.
Both Biden and his presumed November challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, visited the Mexican border with Texas Thursday.
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Perron said the officeholder seeking another term needs to avoid a binary choice election, by a two-step process.
“You do what you promised to do very fast, then quickly out and basically do whatever connects you to the base, give the base what they want, something new, they want new things, so you do what they want,” the political scientist said.
After the incumbent satisfies his base, he then coopts the ideas of his rivals and repackages them as his own so that he can then run offering the new agenda as the president, governor, or mayor of everyone, he said.
“You take good ideas, you make them your own, and you go from the center,” he said. “That’s exactly how you can do it.”
If these two steps are executed correctly, the incumbent effectively ends the campaign before it gets started and has the potential to win a landslide, said the lecturer at the University of Zurich, where he earned his PhD.
“Reagan and Clinton, they were able to form a new political mandate and there was a race,” he said. “When a Nixon or a Reagan wins 49 states, they’re able to just govern from the middle.”
Perron said he began his career as a campaign volunteer working for leftwing candidates in Switzerland, and over the years, he developed a set of principles that applied to all elections where there is an incumbent, regardless of ideology.
The rules he developed also apply in different countries and cultures, as long as the election and media are relatively free, he said. “I write about developing countries, and based on my work I write, for example, how Brazil and Germany are the same.”
If the incumbent fails at these two steps, he has to compete in a binary election, where he could very well lose, he said.
“The real lesson is that you want to avoid the binary choice, because then the challenger can make it a vote on the incumbent and his policies–and then, you just attack, attack, attack the incumbent and undermine his credibility and legitimacy,” he said.
Perron said in the case of Biden, the president was fairly successful in passing legislation and fulfilling campaign promises. However, throughout his third year in office, when he was supposed to be making the pivot to being a more inclusive president, he kept up the hyper-partisanship that was more appropriate early in his term.
“It seems to me the bipartisan Senate bill actually would have gone in that direction,” he said.
“I think Biden did what he could, giving Republicans more policy-wise, would probably not have saved the bill,” he said. “It’s just very difficult to get anything through the House of Representatives right now.”
Perron said Biden’s trip to the border did not hurt him, but he needed to combine it with something spectacular. “Going to the border is OK, but a little late in the game — and it’s little. It would be best together with announcing major action.”
Biden’s border trip and border policy steps are not enough, he said.
“I think it’s not so much a pivot, but more a late activation after long ignoring the issue.”
