The Moneyball Theory of Presidential Social Media
On Monday evening, Jon Stewart returned to the hosting chair of The Daily Show after nearly a decade away—and he spent a nontrivial portion of his opening segment roasting Joe Biden’s first TikTok video. That post, which the Biden-Harris campaign uploaded during the Super Bowl on Sunday, featured the president answering silly, rapid-fire questions about the big game: Jason Kelce or Travis Kelce? The performance was cheeky but decidedly low energy. Biden’s voice is a little raspy, and at one point, he gets very excited about chocolate-chip cookies.
Stewart played the clip in the context of the press’s multiday fixation on Biden’s age. When it ended, he eyed the camera and offered some advice to the campaign’s social team. “Fire everyone,” he deadpanned. “Everyone. How do you go on TikTok and end up looking older?” The audience howled.
This type of exposure is probably not what Biden’s press office had in mind. In fact, it’s hard to tell what they’re going for at all: Although social media has been a in 2008, things look very different today. This is a weird election (my colleague David Graham has that “no one alive has seen a race like this”), unfolding in a weird media ecosystem, on .
