[MUSIC PLAYING] Joe Biden pulled off
an upset for the ages. In politics,
unseating an incumbent is a crazy,
improbable endeavor. Incumbents have
name recognition, fund-raising advantages. Voters are more comfortable
with the devil they know. That's why you have senators
in office forever and only 10 presidents who've
ever lost re-election. [LAUGHING] Now, sure, a lot of people
really hated this particular incumbent, and the polls
predicted he'd lose. But he actually got more votes
than he did last time around, and he was definitely willing
to undermine our democracy to win. So I bet you're wondering
how Joe Biden did it. An election is like a complex,
precarious contraption made up of millions of... decisions.
Some big, some tiny, and it could be hard to tell
until the very end which ones made a difference. If we poke around
in this machine, analyzing some of those
overlooked, counterintuitive, and forgotten decisions, we
can gain a bit of insight into how Democrats managed
to get just enough of them right. I'm Michelle Cottle. I've been covering the
insanity of Washington since 1996. To begin, let's go all the
way back to early 2019, with the start of the primaries. Early on, the Biden camp had
a defining decision to make — who is the
candidate Joe Biden? They had a spectrum
of choices. He could go left and chase
the political zeitgeist of the base. He could brand
himself as a candidate for conservative Dems. Biden knew he didn't have
Obama's magical charisma, so there was definitely
never going to be an "inspire the nation" option. He could maybe try
to be cool and woke or try for nerd
chic, but Biden knew the political
perils of inauthenticity. "So what's something that
you always carry with you?" "Hot sauce." [CRICKETS CHIRPING] [CRUNCHING] So what did his team do? They kept it cheesy. Biden spoke in cliches. "If you're just given half the
chance, you can do it." Progressives
rolled their eyes. "We're in the battle
for the soul of America. — to restore the
soul of the nation. I mean this sincerely —
we have to restore the soul of America." Even some of his
own advisers thought his message was hokey. Many in his party wanted an
in-your-face fighter who‘d go toe to toe with Trump, not
a boring grandpa droning on about unity. "Unity." "Unifier." "Unifying." "Unify." "To unite this nation." Biden decided to
present himself as exactly who he is — a pragmatic, a
centrist, an old guy. "My age has brought with
it a significant amount of experience." His big bet was that
his steadiness is what voters wanted after Trump. But let's not forget, the
strategy looked like it was a flop. "Fourth place for Joe
Biden is catastrophic." "Even worse, coming in third
was the write-in candidate 'not Biden.'" "And I'm not going
to sugarcoat it. We took a gut punch in Iowa." So what changed? Ask Jim Clyburn. His world-famous fish
fry is a must-attend for presidential hopefuls. "It's great to be back. This is my third
fish fry, Jim." Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House and the No. 1 power
broker in South Carolina Democratic politics. "I know Joe. We know Joe. But most importantly,
Joe knows us." Clyburn is influential among
a key constituency that has a soft spot for Joe — moderate religious
African-Americans. These voters wanted a
steady, reliable candidate. Clyburn's endorsement came
just three days before the South Carolina primary. It helped turbocharge
Black turnout for Biden — "My buddy Jim Clyburn,
you brought me back!" [CHEERING] And revived his campaign
heading into Super Tuesday. Joe's boring, cheesy strategy
was suddenly looking much shrewder. In another election, this
might not have worked. But there's a
political lesson here. The party's base looks more
like Clyburn than it does like loud, woke
lefties on Twitter. The result was astonishing. In the span of just one
week, this happened. "I am ending my campaign
and endorsing Joe Biden for president." "I will be casting my
ballot for Joe Biden." "I introduce the next
president of the United States, Joe Biden." [CHEERING] This moment is key
to understanding how the Democrats
approached this election. Eventually, every
struggling campaign must decide whether
to pull the plug or prolong a primary that
can leave the ultimate winner battered and weakened. But this time
around, Democrats knew that the only thing that
mattered was beating Trump. Even Bernie eventually
accepted this. So they all rallied
because of one sacred political strategy. "Unity." But there was a new problem. The entire contraption
flipped upside-down. [THUNDER] When taking on an incumbent,
your worst nightmare is a national crisis. International conflict,
terrorist attacks — tragedies bring the
country together and often rally the public
around the president. The pandemic was a shot
at redemption for Trump. He'd just been impeached,
for God's sake. Now, with strong
leadership, he could unite an anxious nation. Biden had another
crucial decision to make — how to
lead during a crisis without having
any actual power. So what did he do? He retreated to his basement. While the president
was holding rallies and daily press briefings,
Biden was all but invisible. "You know where he is now? He's in his damn
basement again." No rallies, no more
knocking on doors. Instead, he held sad
Zoom calls from his home in Delaware. Frustrated Democrats
scolded him. Why wasn't he making
impassioned public appeals like — "We're not going to accept
a premise that human life is disposable. FEMA is sending us
400 ventilators. You want a pat on the back? We need 30,000 ventilators!" Some even suggested Governor
Cuomo should be the nominee. But from the safety
of his bunker, Biden was actually
making a savvy move — let the president
have the spotlight. "The C.D.C. is advising the use
of non-medical cloth face covering. But this is voluntary. I don't think I'm
going to be doing it. When we have a lot of cases,
I don't look at that as a bad thing. I look at that as,
in a certain respect, as being a good thing. And then I see the
disinfectant, what knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way
we can do something like that by injection?" It's a political rule of thumb
that when your opponent is digging his own grave,
you don't fight him for the shovel. As the race ground on, the
selection of a running mate prompted more speculation
and passion than I have ever covered before, in part
because of Biden's age. It was an incredibly delicate
decision for Team Biden. Amy Klobuchar was a good bet
to help rebuild the "Blue Wall" that gave Trump the 2016 win. But she was white and
a former prosecutor — not ideal, considering
the national moment. This gave a boost to Black
candidates in swing states, but they were largely untested
in the national spotlight. "Hmm." Elizabeth Warren would
do what Joe couldn't: energize progressives. But she'd also
energize Republicans. [GROAN] Kamala Harris came
with risks of her own. After all, she's a
former prosecutor. And remember this? "You also worked with
them to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a
little girl in California who was part of
the second class to integrate her
public schools, and she was bused
to school every day. And that little girl was me." Awkward. Then again, picking her
would show Joe didn't hold a grudge. If there's one thing to
know about picking a V.P., it's that when things
are going well, you don't want to
change the narrative. Kamala Harris was
historic and added pizazz without being too
scary to moderates. That made her a smart pick. Though Trump has had
more controversies than I can count, Biden had
one, too — a booby trap that could have brought
down his entire campaign — his son, Hunter. For sure, there are some
awkward truths about Hunter, from his drug problems
to his business dealings around the world. Team Trump then wrapped these
with layers of conspiracy theories and lies. "This is Hunter
Biden's laptop. And when you look at
the photograph section, it's disgusting and it
includes a large number of underage girls." "Money tied to human
trafficking and prostitution rings. And the other one —
that's another big one — the Chinese money. Joe Biden is
compromised 100 percent." In politics, a conspiracy
theory doesn't have to be true to have legs. Think birtherism or pizzagate. As the attacks from
Trump intensified, Biden was again faced
with a hard choice. He could fight back. Trump's nepotism and
corruption were fat targets. And sometimes in
politics, you have to get down in the mud
with your opponent. But Trump is an
Olympic-level street fighter. So what did Biden do? He hugged Hunter. "Hunter got thrown
out of the military. He was thrown out,
dishonorably discharged — " ”That's not true. He wasn't dishonorably — " "— for cocaine use. And he didn't have a job until
you became vice president. And he didn't have a job." "My son, like a lot of people,
like a lot of people we know at home, had a drug problem. He's overtaken it. He's fixed it. He's worked on it. And I‘m proud of him." Biden leaned into
his fatherly image, which played to
his strengths — a smart political move. But Biden also got
lucky, because Trump had overplayed his hand. The conspiracy theories
were just too crazy, and he even got impeached
for his sketchy efforts. Biden won this
battle precisely by not engaging
with the nuttiness. "Will you shut up, man?" Now, sure, Team Biden
made plenty of mistakes, like underestimating Trump's
appeal with Hispanic voters. But far beyond Joe
and his inner circle, rank-and-file Democrats
across the country worked to keep
the ball rolling. Last summer, before the
first vote was ever cast, a group of operatives
that became known as the Democracy Defense
Nerve Center met to wargame every possible scenario for
how to respond if Trump tried to inappropriately
cling to power. Democrats pre-emptively
deployed their secret weapon, attorney Marc Elias. He's the guy you call when you
need to make sure every vote gets counted. He won more than 50
lawsuits, shooting down Republican efforts
to suppress the vote. And let's not forget
Stacey Abrams and legions of Democrats who worked
literally for years to register voters and
organize turnout operations. Without Abrams, Georgia likely
would not have gone blue. These operatives and
activists and lawyers, and countless others whose
names we'll never know, are the unsung heroes
of the Biden victory. But don't get too excited. Going forward, the bad news
for Democrats is that Joe Biden's winning playbook for
navigating this electoral machine likely
won't be much help. The pandemic, this
president — it was 2020. The whole situation
was truly exceptional. Rather than offering up
one overarching lesson, this race offered
scores of reminders of how complicated and fragile
any winning campaign really is. Joe and his team
found that magic blend of strategy, ideology,
message, authenticity, flexibility, preparedness,
and a big dollop of luck to win the ultimate prize.
