Anti-Trump, pro-Biden "rallies?"

[gulliver]

At his rallies, Fred Trump's brat preens in front of ecstatic crowds who hang on every word he utters, laughing with him, smiling with him, hating with him, "amen-ing," having a good time. The oxytocin is flowing. The participants feel hugged and fed. They'll do or say anything to keep those feelings. The lying just makes it all feel better. It's a tribal war dance.

What would anti-Trump, pro-Biden "rallies" look like? Our side has all of the talented people, the caring people, and the worthy candidates. We drubbed Trump's RNC convention with our DNC convention, even though Trump pulled out all stops on craven ratings-grasping stunts (debauching the White House, for example). Should we be counter-programming against Trump's tired little rallies with some feel good, think good stuff?

[soothsayer]

1. I think those rallies are mainly for Drumpf's ego

He needs that adulation cuz.... narcissist.

[gulliver]

3. I think their main effect is to use the attendees as "happy customer" shills.

True, Trump gets a lot of narcissistic feedback from it, and that adds to the effect. His crowds want to please him.

[Yavin4]

2. Rallies are counter productive

They require advance planning and divert resources. In the end, they don't translate into votes nor do they convince people to vote for you. It's literally preaching to the choir.

For an ego-maniac like Trump, they make him feel good and for the mental health of his staff, they may be worth it.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. It depends on how you utilize rallies.

Rallies are often there to generate excitement among voters in hopes it translates into a higher level of turnout. The engagement fires these groups up and they likely become sure-voters. It also can act as a voter registering event - or a voter education event. The thing is, the latter is likely not happening at Trump rallies. I doubt he has that level of infrastructure in his campaign to educate voters on how to vote by mail, request a ballot ... what to do and what NOT to do so they don't void their ballot.

But if it was a Democratic rally, I believe that would be the biggest opportunity that we just do not have right now without holding rallies.

The other advantage is optics. People like a crowd. I guarantee you Trump received wall-to-wall coverage on every Nevada television network this weekend. That level of energy looks good on camera and gets him out there. Honestly, I don't know how Biden can capture that level of energy doing what he's doing. He can get the press by holding campaign speeches, and Q&As in these states, like he did in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania this past week, but it's not the same as a big, energetic rally.

My only guess is that he give more direct interviews to local television stations, something I doubt Trump will do much of. That can get him on the news and kind of make up for the lack of rallies.

[Yavin4]

10. No one had bigger and more frequent rallies than Bernie Sanders

And he got trounced both times in his run for the nomination. The people who attend them are already voting for the candidate. Most people don't watch rally coverage at home. To political junkies like us, they seem impressive, but not so much to the voters that you need to reach.

[Drunken Irishman]

11. I am not talking about the size of a rally.

I am talking about the context of a rally. The difference is that while Bernie had large rallies, with a lot of people, other candidates were still having rallies too. This isn't to contrast size - but the actual process of holding a rally and everything that comes with it.

It fires voters up. It creates energy and excitement. That is a fact. To be honest with you, had Hillary not held a final, massive rally with the Obamas in Philadelphia the night before the election, I think she loses PA by an even wider margin. In 2004, had Kerry not held his massive election eve rally in Madison, he potentially loses Wisconsin, which he won by less than one percent, and all the talk about Ohio becomes moot because, even with Ohio, he loses that election. Those rallies generated excitement in two very close swing states. Granted, they had different outcomes but I believe it helped in the margins for both states because it fires voters up and, most importantly, it becomes the lead news story for the day.

Obama held his final rally of the 2012 campaign in Des Moines and even ignoring the massive crowd, it was what led the news in every community there - as did Trump's rally last night in Nevada.

Your comparison definitely has merit, as Sanders never won the nomination despite out-drawing Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020. But that contrast is different than what we're facing now. Biden absolutely had significant rallies while campaigning, as did Hillary. In this context, there's no rally comparison because there's no rally.

And again, the optics are strong, even if the rally is only 10,000 people instead of 25,000. It's what the news will discuss. The news almost always, in these swing states, carries the rallies on the local networks (as they did for Trump). You don't get that without the rallies.

So, if Biden isn't going to hold rallies ... what can he do to get local news coverage, which absolutely is important in these swing states? He can continue holding campaign events, though not rallies, which will get coverage. But there's one big difference right now: Biden holds one event a day and is gone by the afternoon. Trump is spending full days in these states, holding multiple events, and likely will be holding multiple rallies throughout the day like a conventional campaign. Once Biden holds his event, and leaves, that's it. I don't know if that is something he can sustain if he's being dwarfed in coverage by Trump's campaign rallies in very important swing states.

But then, I don't know what the answer is. Trump has decided he's going to campaign like it's 2016, pandemic be damned. Biden obviously isn't going to do that. Whose approach is going to work? Well, maybe Trump's backfires, as people see it as irresponsible. It's also possible, though, it works because it gets him the TV coverage for him to go out and lie, lie and lie with no equal coverage for Biden because Biden is doing one event a day and absent on the weekends.

[Yavin4]

12. If big rallies like Trump's were effective...

We would see movement in the numbers, and we're not seeing it. Remember, he had a full week of wall-to-wall coverage during his convention and it didn't move the needle.

[Drunken Irishman]

13. I apologize. It's obvious I am not being clear here.

So, let me try explaining it a different way.

I am not talking about the size of his rallies. His rallies aren't even that big. No bigger than what Biden was seeing back in March before he shut down his rallies.

I am talking about the benefit of holding in-person rallies in swing states - even if we're only looking at a couple thousand people as opposed to 10,000 as you'd expect. For the most part, Trump has not been doing this. This is something he's really ramped up the last couple weeks. Prior to that, the only other rally he held in-person was (not counting the convention) his Tulsa debacle but he seems to have learned from that and purposely downsized the events because he likely knows he can't fill an arena anymore.

So, whatever the polls say is irrelevant because he's just starting to hold these rallies more frequently. In the last two weeks, he's held more in-person rallies than he did in the last five months combined. So, any poll movement is still unknown. As for the coverage he received from the convention, that's irrelevant. Why? Because there's a semi-equal comparison from Biden's side. He, too, had a full week of -wall-to-wall coverage which kind of reinforces my point: there is no comparable level right now to Trump's rallies from Biden. The best we've got is a few hours spent in some swing states like Wisconsin before he jets out well before the evening.

Trump has spent the last 24 hours in Nevada. He's going to see coverage in Nevada. If that's what he will do going forward, and Biden is only having small events, I suspect Trump is going to get way more headlines out of these rallies than Biden will from his smaller events, as Trump will not only hit up more states, he'll remain in those states longer and potentially have multiple rallies.

I don't know if that will work. But there's a reason candidates hold rallies. It's not just to stroke their ego, though, in Trump's case, that's a big part of it. If rallies were irrelevant, campaigns wouldn't waste the energy and money it takes to set something like that up. You said it yourself: they require advance planning and divert resources.

And yet, campaigns still do 'em. Biden was still doing 'em before everything shut down. There is a reason for this beyond just the fact it's the expectation. Candidates hold rallies to get the news cycle. That's the biggest reason for 'em because they generate a significant amount of LOCAL buzz.

Biden giving a speech, reading it off a teleprompter in front of media, and then hopping on a plane and leaving will get news, too, but I don't know if it'll get a fraction of the coverage of Trump holding a rally with a couple thousand screaming supporters. Especially if he's doing it multiple times a day in specific states.

And I suspect that's where we're heading, to be honest.

So, again, as I asked initially, how does Biden counter that? I don't know. It's possible he doesn't need to counter it, and these rallies won't mean a lick. But we've never had a campaign in modern US history where one candidate holds rallies and the other holds speeches in empty rooms in front of a smattering of local press. It's never been done. So, who knows how it'll work out?

I will say this: I am interested to see how Biden's ad game will impact voting. He's on the air all over the place, especially on cable, as I see his ads every night multiple times ... Trump? None.

That could be just as important. Everyone shits on Bloomberg but he literally bought himself into viability by running ads during the primary.

[gulliver]

8. There's something to be said for productions that show it "feels better" to be on our side.

I don't think Trump's rallies are all about making Trump feel good. They also make the attendees feel good. They're only a dinky number of people, probably a bunch of them "Trump deadheads" who go to rally after rally. But Fox "News" can play them up, making it look "cool and fun" to be a Trumpie.

How effective is it? It keeps a certain part of the TV audience in Trump's little cult.

[RainCaster]

4. Dem rallies would be online

We are smarter than Trumpanzees.

[Sedona]

6. We can have a Biden/Harris rally

January 20th at noon on the mall

[gulliver]

9. Looking forward to the that.

[Midnightwalk]

7. How scalable is video conferencing

Maybe not enough to set up but the virtual convention worked great.

I’m thinking of people videoing themselves and family watching the vido conference and editing that into the stream for reactions, applause, etc.

Edit to add: Virtual Rally. Wonder if that’s trade marked yet...

[msongs]

14. its perception shaping - trump is virile and in charge and unafraid and joe is

not (not my personal opinion, just a PR assessment)

[llmart]

15. No sense debating this under the circumstances.

With a pandemic raging, the only sane thing to do is not hold rallies or any sort of group event.