The Podcast Election
The 2024 presidential election is well underway but it is a bit of a strange one. Unless I am mistaken this is the first time in over a century that an incumbent president ran against a former president and his immediate predecessor (I believe Taft against Roosevelt was the last time). Ironically though despite Joe Biden and Donald Trump being the frontrunners both have done very few interviews and press conferences. I’m a politics junkie and going based solely off Youtube and the twitter algorithm, Robert F Kennedy Jr. is easily receiving the most coverage. Despite polling at less than twenty percent, alternative media is obsessed with him. I don’t see this is a bad thing, anybody who has any curiosity about RFK jr’s stances or plans or views on a subject can watch any of the hundreds of hours of interviews done with Kennedy over just the last 6 months. While Joe Biden has a long history that is easily accessible to learn about, he has not done an interview that lasted longer than 40 mins in many years (not since being vice-president).
On the GOP side you see a similar phenomenon, looking at polling despite there being about 10 individuals seeking the Republican nomination Donald Trump is easily the frontrunner. Much like his Democrat counterpart though he has made very few (at least for a presidential candidate) public appearances, he has not sat down for an interview that ran for over an hour since leaving office. His countless rivals for the nomination however have appeared on several podcasts, long shot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has countless podcast appearances; former Vice President Mike Pence has appeared on Jordan Peterson’s podcast for an hour long interview; Ron Desantis has done hour long interviews on Larry P Arns Show and John Stossel's. Green party candidate Cornel West has also been regularly appearing on podcasts such as Russel Brands (which he used to announce his candidacy).
The result of all this is an interesting phenomenon in some ways: the candidates less likely to win are the runs doing the most retail politics, and as a result are the ones more vetted by the public. While it can be exhausting listening to Robert F Kennedy leather couch about vaccines, autism, covid-19, and a variety of other issues at least we know exactly how HE feels about it. From Joe Biden we get vague platitudes, and while I think Kennedy is wrong about many of things he says (especially about autism) I don’t know what Joe Biden views on autism are, I don’t know if Joe Biden has any views that aren’t told to him by handlers and the Democratic National Committee. Not to mention it does seem like Joe Biden can’t handle talking unscripted for more than a couple of minutes. Again on the Republican side it’s more or less the same, Trump does most of his campaigning off his virus infected bootleg twitter, where he has rarely mentioned any policies. Whereas Vivek Ramaswamy who is polling between 1 and 5 percent has discussed every issue from LGBT rights to trade to the war in Ukraine.
Does any of this matter? I don’t know, all I know is Joe Biden is very old and hasn’t had a press conference in 5 months and none since announcing his candidacy for president. His communication with the press has been limited to the occasional off the cuff response after making an announcement. While I wish the two frontrunners were different, I would feel infinitely better about them if they both sat down for a long-form interview like all the underdogs have.
