The Daily - What the 2020 Campaign Sounds Like

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Song playlists at presidential campaign rallies can be about more than music — they can reflect a candidate’s values, political platform, identity and target audience. We examine the role of these playlists in the 2020 campaign. Guest: Astead W. Herndon, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:The Times analyzed playlists used by nine Democratic candidates and President Trump to see how they help set the tone for each campaign. Turn your sound on.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's indeed a pleasure, it is my honor and pleasure, a pleasure for me to introduce the next president of the United States of America. Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Julian Castro. The next president of the United States of America, Elizabeth Warren. Today, what the 2020 presidential campaign sounds like. Politics reporter Astead Herndon on what we can learn about the state of the race from the candidates' playlists. It's Thursday, August 22nd. I said there are, of course, so many ways to think about a campaign and analyze it and break it down. So why did you decide to zero in on music?

When we think about political campaigns, essentially they are stories. And the candidates are trying to tell the public a story about themselves and about what they can provide to that voter's life. And they do that in a lot of ways. They do that through policies. They do that by touting their experience. But they also do that by trying to evoke a certain emotion. And that often has happened through music all the way back in the 50s.

Ike for president, Ike for president, Ike for president, Ike for president, you like Ike. You had Dwight Eisenhower with a jingle about we like Ike. If you think to the 60s, you have Kennedy Can. And these campaigns were having jingles not just to literally have the voters remember their names, but they would have stories in them to evoke a certain emotion that would track with the kind of message that the campaign was trying to send. Do you want a man for president who's seasoned through and through? But that's a doggone season that he won't try something new.

A man who's old enough to know and young enough to do. Well, it's up to you, it's up to you, it's strictly up to you. I mean, when we think back about Fikinity, it is that Camelot, youthful, generational change feeling that we still think about. And that was a clear strategy from that campaign to take what could have been a negative and spin it into a positive argument. And that happens through the song, too. And what we see with Eisenhower and Kennedy continues on. Hello, Lyndon. Well, hello, Lyndon.

You have Lyndon Johnson, who uses a popular song from the time, Hello, Dolly!, and spins it into Hello, Lyndon. You have Jimmy Carter with a more kind of Melo Colley song. That talks about him being straight and simple and can fix government and the kind of can-do attitude that we have come to know Jimmy Carter to this day. He said his name was Jimmy Carter And he was running for president And these are, again, intentional choices of campaigns to quite literally write a song that puts the themes that they are trying

to evoke to a jingle that sticks in the public's mind, but also can reshape the way they view a particular candidate. It's a framing device. But as we get closer and closer to the modern era, you see the modern campaigns start to fuse politics and culture in a way where even the political campaigns themselves somewhat seem like cultural phenomenons. You have Bill Clinton on the Arsenio Hall show playing the saxophone in a kind of memorable moment. And it ends up with Obama. It is my extraordinary privilege.

Who, more than anything, his rise to the White House, his historic rise, was not only one that was political. An artist who has stirred our hearts and our souls for a generation. But was a big cultural moment that saw Hollywood and music and politics all seen for a second to blend into one. Please give it up for Mr. Stevie Wonder. And why does that end up working for Obama? Well, there was a sense that he was a kind of person of culture and that this was authentic to his personality and to what he listened to

and from the communities in which he comes from. I think that's an important point. The merging of kind of your political identity and a cultural identity only works if the public thinks it's an authentic thing. So it's kind of risky when we think about even a couple years ago, with Hillary Clinton was running for president. There was this massive derision when she tried to do kind of modern dance moves like the whip and the nae nae.

I remember still talking to Black voters. I was out in Baltimore and they bring that up as a sign that Democrats were pandering to Black voters and not necessarily doing an explicit reach out. Now, Barack Obama did dance moves all the time. The difference between one candidate and the other is the feeling that is authentic to themselves and that it is something that you can really believe coming from them. Which I think brings us to today. So as you started to compile this music for the 2020 candidates, how are you thinking about the role of music in this particular campaign, 2020? If Barack Obama cemented the merging of politics and culture, Donald Trump has exploded it.

This is a president who was a cultural figure long before he was a political one. And his campaign style, for anyone who has been to those rallies, is so tied in to a kind of cultural phenomenon that sometimes looks more like a concert or a megachurch worship experience rather than a traditional political rally. And so what I wanted to do was say, knowing that they are eventually going to go up against such energy on the Republican side? Are Democrats doing anything differently? What does authenticity mean to these candidates? And particularly in such a diverse field, does it look differently from one candidate to the other? Okay, so let's dive into those playlists. Where should we start on the Democratic side in the 2020 field?

Let's start with Bernie Sanders. Brooklyn, give a hometown welcome to the man that has been speaking truth to power for generations, the next president of the United States of America, Bernie Sanders. Let's go. Obviously, he was coming into this race off the strength of a 2016 race. But we knew that going in here, he wanted to tell more personal stories, and he wanted to lean in to his quote-unquote political revolution. That comes out in the songs.

At his first rally in Brooklyn, he comes up to Brooklyn Go Hard. He talks more about his upbringing in that community, but then when you look through the list, all his other songs have that kind of revolution theme. So you have things like Make a Change. Songs like Power to the People and Take It to the Streets.

So Sanders' musical selection is a very on-the-nose articulation of his central message of disrupting the economic and political order and is not necessarily about broadening his message through music. Exactly. But that's exactly why folks love him, is because he has been the same person. And that, to people, gives them a sense of this is his real authentic self. In that same vein, just as Senator Sanders is owning his kind of political reputation through the playlist, so are some of the other presidential candidates.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who has struggled to break out of the race, but has really leaned into kind of an openly feminist presidential campaign, her playlist really reflects that also. You have songs like Woman by Kesha. No Scrubs by TLC. Ladies First by Queen Latifah. Beyonce's Run the World. These are songs that match what she's trying to do.

Hello, South Bend! Mayor Pete Buttigieg is another one who the words and the sounds match. He has kind of broken out of this race because of his unifying message. And more so than any other playlist, his playlist takes little bits and pieces from everywhere. So you have American Crazy by Brothers Osborne. We're all just American crazy. But you also have American Boy by Estelle and Kanye West. You'll be my American boy, American boy. But you also have American Boy by Estelle and Kanye West.

Confident by Demi Lovato. You know, more modern songs. So while Sanders and Gillibrand have a very specific theme throughout, Bootha Judges can jump into different genres, different demographics, just like his rhetoric. But it's also interesting how they use particular songs. Senator Elizabeth Warren usually walks up to 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton. The kind of classic working class song about, you know, it's all taken and no given, the tough person's life of middle class working America that fits with her populist themes. It's about reclaiming a kind of identity and a dignity of work. When she's in the South,

though, that song changed. I was with her during her kind of first Southern tour through majority Black communities in Tennessee and Georgia and Mississippi. And during that tour, it was not Dolly Parton that was greeting Senator Warren as she came onto the stage, but Aretha Franklin and her song Respect. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, another song of similar themes, right? We are still talking about kind of working class dignity. We're still talking about women's empowerment and kind of reclaiming that.

But, of course, Aretha Franklin means something different. And I don't think it's an accident that when she's in those communities that that song was chosen. But what do you make of that very intentional targeting? I think that's politics. I think there is a kind of cynical view that says that that is pandering to an audience. Certainly those things can come off inauthentic

if they do not feel like they are tied to a candidate or something a candidate would do. If Elizabeth Warren was in the South and started playing Outkast, the Southern rap group, that would feel different. Why? Why would that be different? And it sounds like perhaps a little problematic. Well, because, I mean, we keep going back to this point about does it feel true to that

individual's identity? I, in all the time I've spent looking, you know, talking to Senator Warren and seeing her at rallies, she's never struck me as someone who's been listening to OutKast. She is someone who listens to and cares about Aretha Franklin. So you can do the kind of messaging, you can do kind of intentional targeting without it being pandering, if it seems, within that candidate's personality. And so I think that is the tightrope that these campaigns are trying to walk. We'll be right back.

So we see Warren and Sanders playing music that gives very direct voice to their larger campaign messages, but that also seems plausibly like the music they have in their lives and that they would listen to. Because what they're up to here is trying to seem real and consistent and authentic. Exactly. real and consistent and authentic. Exactly. They are trying to match what the people coming to that rally think of them. Sometimes that leans into a political message, but sometimes that leans into your identity

and centering that piece throughout your campaign, throughout your rallies, and throughout your playlist. Take Senator Kamala Harris. throughout your rallies and throughout your playlists. Take Senator Kamala Harris. Her playlist has only one white artist and is overwhelmingly a mix of genres.

It's Humble by Kendrick Lamar. It's T-Shirt by Migos. It's also R&B hits. Video from NDRRE. Or older classics. Cold Sweat by James Brown. I don't care about your past. I don't think it's an accident that this is overwhelmingly Black artists.

She is trying to tell a story about authenticity that's not based in policy, to tell a story about authenticity that's not based in policy, but is in what you would think a cool, middle-aged Black woman would listen to. I drink up In a cold sweat So to the degree that music ever tells you what's going on in a campaign,

this playlist suggests what about the decisions that the Kamala Harris campaign has made about how to represent itself. If you listen to how Kamala Harris talks about change, sometimes it's pretty explicitly around identity. Thank you, thank you, thank you, South Carolina NAACP for honoring me with this evening. I was in South Carolina as she told the audience of Black working class folks. It matters who's in those rooms where the decisions are being made. It matters. It matters that someone had experiences like us and that us is intentional. It's trying to show a level of kinship with not only an important voting bloc, but a voting bloc that's felt historically ignored.

We always have to be in those rooms, especially and even when there aren't many like us there. That is a story about representation that her campaign is trying to tell. And that's a story that comes through with the artist's choice and the song choice. I wonder if you can interpret Harris's musical selections as putting her identity in the foreground and saying, or recognizing, that that may be as important, if not more important, than her actual policy positions, which have occasionally confused people when she's gone back and forth on issues like Medicare for All.

The Harris campaign thinks that people want not only someone who can deliver on policy, but they also think people are looking for a figure who can beat Trump and a figure who stands for everything that Trump is not. Right. And someone like Harris can have policies that might seem too far to the left or too moderate for some voters, but they'll have faith in her if they believe she's authentically herself. Right.

The biggest example of this is the last election. I mean, Donald Trump was not where most Republicans were on particular policy issues. What he did have, though, was a sense that he was going through that campaign being himself. The most repeated thing you would hear on the trail was that he was himself and that Hillary Clinton was inauthentic. The fairness of that is a whole separate question.

But that's the lesson from 2016. Voters will come to you if they think who you are is true to what you believe in. So that brings us to the Democratic frontrunner, who we haven't mentioned yet, and his musical taste, which is Joe Biden. Joe Biden has been doing this a while, right? And he is someone who's not only run for president twice before, but has, you know, kind of been on the scene since 72. What he has now that he's never had in those previous runs

is the weight of the vice presidency and genuine support from Black voters. And when you look at Biden's playlist, it merges those two views of him, the kind of working class Joe view that he has long enjoyed as a reputation, but also this new Joe Biden that we have now, which has real and deep relationships in Black communities

and widespread support across Black communities. His playlist is almost 50-50, evenly split between Black and white. Hmm. You'll hear All I Do by Stevie Wonder, I'm Coming Out by Diana Ross, or Good Times by Sam Cooke.

I felt this good since I don't know when And I might not feel this good again So come on But you'll also hear Heroes by David Bowie, We Take Care of Our Own by Bruce Springsteen. We take care of our own Or modern stuff like All We Ever Knew by Head in the Heart. When I wake up in the morning

I see nothing For miles and miles and miles. It's a mix of genres, but you almost have it alternating between black and white. La la la la la la la. La la la la la la la. And when I think about when I saw him in South Carolina during one of his first campaign stops, he took this even a step further. It wasn't just that the playlist was on,

but before he took the stage, a Black choir performed, a Black drumline performed. It was a kind of community-based event. It works. It seems like he is bringing South Carolina to the rally. And that is what politics is, that type of storytelling. I wonder if that's one perhaps small way to understand why Biden is the frontrunner here. I always think about what makes Joe Biden different from a bunch of other candidates

who have also pitched themselves as kind of working class, electable candidates who can speak to the quote-unquote white Midwestern voter. And the thing that makes him different is support from Black people. It's why he's ahead in the poll and why others are behind. And instead, I know we've been talking about the Democratic

side of this campaign. What about President Trump? What do we see in his music selections this year, in 2020, that help us understand his strategy and how his campaign sees this race? At rallies for Democratic candidates, music is a prelude, a prologue, a sideshow. At Trump rallies, it is the main event. It is what tides them together for hours and hours as they wait for the rally to begin. And more so than that, it's just all you can hear. It's played at a deafening decibel level. That is not meant for you to have side conversations during.

You're supposed to be into the music. It's exciting. At a Trump rally, you're there for him, but you're also there for each other. And there is this kind of community feel that, frankly, is unique to those events. You know, dance battles in the crowd, kind of loud, top of your lungs singing. You hear the YMCA at a Trump rally and the whole stadium will do it simultaneously. And so as we look through the Trump playlist, some of these have become almost synonymous with the president himself because he's been using these songs for now three years

of what has been these intensely watched events. there's been these intensely watched events. Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd. You have lots of songs by Queen, Under Pressure, We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions. But you also have some maybe unexpected ones. You have The Prayer by Bocelli and Celine Dion. You have Memories from the musical Cats.

You have Cats. Yeah. But, you know, you also have the same song he had his first dance to at inauguration, My Way by Frank Sinatra. Yes, it was my way. What exactly is the message of this kind of strange mix of music, do you think? It's, I think, kind of hard to create a connective tissue through the words and lyrics. But what you do have and what our kind of analysis showed is he had the largest majority of white artists and majority white bands. And he also has a pretty old playlist. And I think the combo of those two things are really important.

It's white nostalgia. It's make America great again. It is evoking a kind of feeling of the past, but it's still stadium music. So rather than being the music of a political message, it's not uprising. It's not feminism. It's not African-American identity. It's just loud, blaring Americana. I think that's a perfect description. We don't know if President Trump listens to Memories by

Cats. We don't know if he listens to Queen as much as this playlist reflects. But we do know about him is that he feeds off emotions from the crowd and that he loves a show. And that is clear the second that audience gets in the stadium. And so I would say the authenticity piece for him is not one that's reflected in the words of the songs, but is one that is in the emotion that's in the building. It's that showman quality that they've come to see, that they're

excited to see. That's what they get. So whether or not the music feels true to what Trump actually listens to, the whole scene, it sounds like, evokes a deep sense of what Trump stands for. And it feels like this question, which we keep referring to, of authenticity, Trump achieves that on a kind of order of magnitude beyond what anyone else is currently doing on the other side. We know that each of the candidates is trying to introduce themselves to the public and to stand out from what is a crowded Democratic field. And music is one of the ways they try to tell that story. When I think about the scene at Trump rallies, before the speakers begin, when the crowd is doing the YMCA and the wave and the

dancing, I think that there is actual political value in that energy. And whoever wins on the Democratic side will have to motivate their base in a way that matches or exceeds that level of energy. And it has to be done in a way that seems authentic to who that person is. And that is not going to be an easy task. Well said. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

The Trump administration revealed a new regulation on Wednesday that would allow it to indefinitely detain migrant families who illegally cross the border. The regulation is designed to replace a decades-old court agreement that limited how long the government could hold migrant children in custody, a ruling that Trump has complained allowed undocumented immigrants

to be released into the country. The change would require approval from a federal judge and is expected to be immediately challenged in court. expected to be immediately challenged in court. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.