Backward and in Converse: Artful Political Communication;How the Biden/Harris Presidential Ticket Reverses the 2-for-1 Campaign

Abstract

This article critically examines the visual and mediated communication of vice presidential candidate and now vice president, Kamala Harris, and Harris’s political surrogates leading up to the 2020 presidential election. As a launching point, we build on our 2016 election retrospective, where we analyzed “Hillary Through Time” and found that political women were not only primed to “take advantage of the democratization of visual rhetorical presentations” but also, political women could challenge normative coverage “through a mediated image of her own making.” Fast forward 4 years, we offer such agency through the visual communication of Kamala’s campaign-mediated image. Drawing from the philosophy of Susanne K. Langer, we argue that Kamala Harris intentionally advances “artful political communication” as a method for challenging gendered aesthetic tropes of political women; ultimately shifting the narrative of “2 for the price of 1” from deferential to empowered.

Four years ago, we examined “Hillary Through Time” for the 2016 American Behavioral Scientist election retrospective, looking at every TIME magazine cover image of Hillary Clinton from 1992 to 2016. Rooted in feminist media research, we found, not surprisingly, that TIME cover images coded Hillary the Wife as inept at femininity, Hillary the Candidate as a threat to patriarchal expectations of political hegemony, and Hillary the Senator and the Diplomat as in her place, one step removed from executive office, and no longer a threat to presidential expectations. We walked away from that project with some hopeful takeaways, which is where we picked up this project for Kamala Harris (Kamala), and the 2020 American Behavioral Scientist retrospective.

We concluded that article with the following message: “The first woman president will not be elected because of her press coverage. She will be elected in spite of it. She will be elected because she successfully confronts that coverage through a mediated image of her own making.” We predicted that the democratization of visual rhetoric, in other words, communication from the candidates themselves would play a pivotal role in framing their own agency—and we have seen that play out in 2020, from Elizabeth Warren’s selfie lines to AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and #SquadGoals, Ayanna’s visual campaign about power, Blackness and Alopecia in America, and certainly, we argue, in the case of Kamala Harris, and her vice presidential campaign narrative.

In Hillary’s TIME coverage, she was often criticized in the framing of a “2-for-the-price-of-1” (2-for-1) narrative (Taylor & Pye, 2019), where she was the looming and threatening dark specter of Bill Clinton’s first campaign, as the ambitious wife who could not also bake cookies and be a mother—and in his second term the First Lady who did not know her place, overshadowing her husband through her health care initiative. Largely because these two characters had been intertwined for so long, Bill Clinton was not prominent in her 2008 campaign and even less so in her 2016 campaign. She even went so far as to rebrand herself “Hillary” dropping Clinton altogether. In past campaigns, the image and visual of 2-for-1 rhetoric has communicated vulnerability in presidential elections, which is to say, if you cannot stand alone—you don’t deserve the job.

Fast forward to 2020, and the Biden/Harris campaign has not only embraced the 2-for-1 narrative but they have showcased it. From the logo, to the website, to Instagram images, the Biden/Harris campaign has been about equality at the top of the ticket. In fact, the president-elect is so comfortable centering Kamala, that some have wondered if she will be the de facto president. For example, in the first three speeches of the Biden/Harris era—including first, the candidate party nomination acceptance speeches at the convention; second, the president and vice-president elect speeches; and finally, the first policy speech on the COVID (coronavirus disease) crisis and Building Back Better—Kamala had equal, or at times, more speaking time than the president-elect. We argue this is no accident.

The rise of digital media and the democratization of media have created disciplinary anxiety for rhetorical, political, and media scholars alike, as what counts as a proper object of study becomes more and more expansive. In political communication a common response to this anxiety has been to fence in longform, discursive public address—in the forms of official speeches and debates—as the most critical campaign communication (Hart, 1999). But just as it is hard to tell when a campaign officially begins (or in the case of 2020, when it actually ends), it is equally difficult to know what counts as official campaign rhetoric. In other words, it is tough to draw rigid lines between text and context. Just 4 years ago, many scholars would have questioned whether a tweet or Instagram post could count as significant political communication, but we now have a president who routinely and openly bypasses traditional modes of communication, using Twitter to fire people, announce foreign policy decisions, and launch inquisitions, opening the door to new channels for “official” communication.

To that end, we situate our analysis in candidate messaging, focusing less on media framing of candidate discourse, but the rhetorical agency of the Biden/Harris political discourse through campaign art and visual rhetoric, with some examples of how mainstream mass media adjusted to these innovations. It would be irresponsible for us not to acknowledge that this 2-for-1 framing was used against their candidacy—from the sitting president himself, often addressing Kamala Harris as “that woman who we can’t let in the back door,” “a monster,” “a whackjob,” and his surrogates and politically polarized media like Breitbart calling her “the de facto president which should scare us all.” Even in some Democratic party circles, she has been labeled the future, which has caused some ambivalence in democratic and progressive coalition politics. Still, we focus on candidate messaging for two reasons: First, we see mainstream media as incapable of framing political women through anything but a status quo lens that leans hard into masculine and restrictive presidential expectations. The second and more important reason is that as rhetorical scholars we see the benefit of looking at the visual as a text, philosophically and rhetorically beyond the ideological and gendered limitations of the mainstream media.

For our case analysis, we draw from the well of three visual media sources: (1) Biden/Harris Instagram posts, (2) campaign sponsored and funded political art, and (3) political campaign video advertising. To analyze the candidate messaging, we draw heavily from the philosophy of Susanne K. Langer and expand on her theoretical lens into what we call “artful political communication” (Langer, 1942, 1953; Crick, 2004; Stroud, 2008) as a method for challenging gendered aesthetic tropes of political women. Langer’s main contribution to rhetoric is simply a lens for reprioritizing feeling, or presentation, over only discursive representation. There has been somewhat of a revival in Langerian theory in rhetorical and composition studies—which is not so surprising as we witness more feminine and feminist texts centered in our everyday, from politics, to food, to pop culture.

We build on Langer, as she preceded Burke, because for us, she speaks more broadly about symbolism as it relates to feminine and feminist rhetorical style, which is also to say, Langer, as a speculative lens for rhetorical curiosity, creates a broader set of rhetorical objects to challenge and reimagine hegemonic masculine politics. Below, we advance “artful political communication” as a tool that simultaneously achieves social movement and recalibrates our understanding of politics and gender beyond the limited constraints of presidential rhetoric in the field of political communication.

This Question of “New” and “Old” Rhetoric

The “object” of rhetoric is not a new debate—from where speech and public address begins and ends to if and how it centers the personal as the political. But as Langer suggests, insufficient attention to presentational symbolism (affect and emotion) and an overemphasis of representational symbolism (logic and reason) is a dichotomy that has resulted in the neglect of a large part of human activity. Murray Edelman alerts us to both Langer and nonrepresentational symbolism. Edelman (1964) hints at the notion that presentational communication or, to use his terminology, condensation symbols (which we see as performative to create feeling), as not only a possibility but also potentially the only route to significant political change, whether that change is positive or negative. Edelman (1964) explains that referential symbols provide economical ways for people to refer to objects or states of affairs. This type of symbolization is thought to be more logical because meaning is, arguably, not relative to the individual. Statistics, for instance, are referential symbols.

Condensation symbols, on the other hand, are situational and evocative. While they may involve multiple referential symbols, these condense and are experienced as one, unified symbolic event. Posters and songs often condense in this way. Whether or not referential symbols condense may be relative to the context or situation, making them difficult to “fact-check” in the same way as symbols that are derived from more formal logic. Back to the “object” of speech, symbolism can make political communication scholars a little squeamish because the visuals are not seen as logical-discursive symbols like speech and text, and because they are evocative, they involve feeling, which can lead to coercion or propaganda. An example from the Biden/Harris visual campaign that helps test our understanding of these nuances: Was an audience more moved by Kamala’s vice presidential podium speech or her white suit? Edelman would say, well, no matter your feeling, you should be more moved by the words of the speech—Langer would argue, not so fast—it is a both/and.

The tension between substance and style in political communication (Brummett, 2008) is a consistent anxiety in the field. An entire issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs was dedicated to the question and value of visualizing public address (Finnegan, 2010). Where philosophers and rhetoricians have advanced the utility of political performativity (Butler, 1999) and even style as epistemological resistance (Biesecker, 1992), scholars have pushed back calling for a return to rationality over feeling, a political utopia where ideas, discourse, and policy were centered over affect and emotion. Even candidates (e.g., Bernie Sanders) have called for a more formal rhetorical approach, a way to “get back” to the policy and the guts of public service. But that premise assumes that politics and policy has only been discursive. American politics has always been invested in both linguistic and stylistic persuasion, but because of who has defined informality in the canon, we celebrate the discursive and denigrate style. For example, are we really to believe that Bernie Sanders who has called for less stylized rhetoric is not himself a stylized icon for his audience? For example, Bernie’s 2021 inauguration mittens. We would argue that such a utopia is not only ahistorical but also gendered; such a place would be inherently exclusive of political women (Hirschmann, 1989). Even if we accept that previous generations experienced politics more rationally and less emotionally, it is simply not possible to “go back.” Technology has not just changed politics—it has changed us, the audience. It has changed how we experience the world and has introduced new ways of communicating that require new means of analysis. Perhaps we are “seduced” by highly affective media, as Hart (1999) claims, but if such seduction is inevitable (and we argue it is), it is important that we understand the process and develop a better understanding of the role of feeling in politics. Further still, we argue that affective campaigning is not as irrational as previous political communication research suggests.

Because the binary of discursive versus nondiscursive in the “object” of presentation and rhetoric is complicated by gender, and the private versus public binary of public sphere life, new modes of analysis must be interrogated in the field of political rhetoric. Whereas scholars like Edelman, and even Jamieson would say, art is helpful in drawing inferences but can also cloud factual meaning, Langer would say, art is necessary in creating and discerning meaning, and large portions of human mental activity cannot be captured in linear terms. We would argue, in an advanced digital medium like contemporary politics, it is impossible for the “object” of rhetoric to be delimited to only discursive texts; and as Langer argues, art (in our case these visual representations of Kamala’s candidacy) exists as a gestalt combination of discursive representation and nondiscursive rhetorical symbols—rather, artful political communication.

Skirting Expectations and Artful Political Communication

The desire for rationality and logos over feeling and pathos is the scholarly sentiment that has cultivated the important work in presidential studies, and presidential expectations (Trent et al., 1993, 2005, 2017); expectations research is critical to our field, if for no other reason of providing the baseline for how, when, and where political women can and do make inroads in executive level political leadership. Where that literature stops, however, is the curiosity of when affect and emotion are logical. While Jamieson and Hart find the turn to a mediated democracy regrettable, there are a number of positive aspects for American democracy as we shift from the electronic age to the digital era. First, digital culture is participatory; and perhaps most important, it is agentic, giving the publisher some control of their content and visual narrative that allows for a disruption, positive and negative, of mainstream-mediated norms. We saw this disruption first (arguably) in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and presidential leadership style (McKinney & Banwart, 2011; Finnegan & Mixon, 2014; Mackay, 2015) ultimately bypassing the presidential press room in his second term to achieve mediated flexibility. We certainly saw the volcanic possibilities of presidential mediated reality throughout Donald Trump’s presidency (Gunn, 2020), a style of leadership where digital culture was the bully pulpit.

Our article relies on the assumption that digital technology has radically changed political campaigning, political leadership, and our environment, as we experience politics as consumers and voters. We turn to Langer to help us unpack this rapidly evolving landscape to provide a better understanding of how political art functions as persuasion, in such a way that deliberative debate/discourse is not always already privileged over affect and feeling. Langer’s use of “feeling” is not synonymous with emotion or even affect. Rather, she uses it “in its widest possible sense” (Langer, 1942, p. 8). For Langer, feelings are synonymous with conscious experiences, and all experiences, to be consciously experienced at all, must have some form that is shared with at least one previous experience. In her view then, feelings do have form, so they can be symbolized and, therefore, can function according to logic. In other words, feelings are, or at least can be, just as rational as any other type of thought—one might even conclude that all thoughts are, in a sense, feelings. An example of political art that achieved such a feat is the Barack Obama campaign poster “Hope” designed by Shepard Fairy. Through one word and one image, the audience could fill in the gaps that fit their feelings and desires about leadership with a shared outcome in mind, a new and different presidential expectation in Washington.

Although Langer lays the groundwork for a theory of society as feeling and art as society objectified, she stops short of providing a clear framework for the practical study of art as objectified feeling. Sandelands (1998) picks up where she left off. As he explains, “To say that a work of art or a society is alive is to say that it is a bounded entity, that it is dynamic, that it grows and that its future is yet to be decided” (p. 103). In this seemingly simple statement he lays out the necessary conditions for identifying both societies and art objects, and as we will argue, artful political communication as well. A first step toward constructing a logic for “artful political communication” will be to use Langer’s framework to identify examples of political art and explore their connection to society, which for Sandelands is tied to social movement.

Like Sandelands, we argue that social movement is the primary illusion of artful communication. In recent years, both Crick (2004) and Stroud (2008) have broached the subject of “artful communication,” based on Deweyan aesthetics, and its relationship to rhetoric. Crick stops short of telling us exactly how communication can become artful or rhetorical, while Stroud (2008) identifies three characteristics of an aesthetic experience: “Aesthetic experience is both integrated with and demarcated from surrounding experiences, has a unique individualizing quality, and possesses a sort of meaningful unity among its parts” (p. 155). This is remarkably similar to the way Langer describes art as both occurring in experience and being set off or bound in some way. She also describes the gestalt or holistic nature of art, and one could interpret the “unique individualizing quality” of aesthetic experience as synonymous with feeling. From Langer, we know that to count something as art, it must include abstraction, freedom, and expressiveness, but most important, it must create a primary illusion. Art does this by expressing “vital form” (Langer, 1942) or forms of life, including dynamic tensions, growth, and possibility. Drawing from Sandelands, the primary illusion created by artful communication is a feeling of society, and we argue communication is most artful when it is conceived of as both a means and end, where the greatest end is a transcendence of self. If a communicative act meets the above criteria we can consider it both artful, but what makes it political?

As we will demonstrate, artful communication is political insofar as it expresses social movement. The term social movement is more theoretically complex than everyday use would suggest, and social movement scholarship includes a wide variety of theoretical assumptions (Cathcart, 1978; McGee, 1980; Zarefsky, 1980; Maheu, 1995; Buechler, 1995; Cloud, 2001). Sandelands’s interpretation of society-as-feeling provides an alternative definition of social movement as movement-as-feeling, or perhaps more aptly, movement-of-feeling, that can be best understood through art. Both Sandelands and Langer agree that art objects necessarily have boundaries. For example, photographs and posters are framed, songs and videos have a duration, and all works of art are bound or limited by their medium. When we hear a song and recognize it as a song (as opposed to random noise), we tacitly acknowledge that it was created by a person who is, or was part, of a community. We sense the dynamic tensions of a society through things like balance and harmony, or chaotic composition. We sense growth and possibility through the rising scales in a song or the gradient on a website. It is through these vital forms, that we sense (i.e., feel) the group in which and for which they were created. When we respond positively, we identify with that group; we feel the group to some degree, and in this way, we transcend our individual self. But, society is a process, so as society shifts, expressions of society shift, and we feel that too. In other words, social movement is a change in our feeling of society, a perceptible shift from one feeling to another. To study social movement, then, is to study social feeling, and one way shifts in social feeling are objectified is through artful political communication.

Operationalizing Artful Political Communication

Drawing from Stroud’s (2008) artful communication, Langer (1977) and Sandelands (1998), we have added the additional criteria that the most artful communication is used as an end in itself rather than a mechanism to achieve politically motivated results, which is to say, an “object” becomes artful political communication when it socially moves its audience and results in a transcendence of self. We do, however, depart from Stroud on what this last bit means. Whereas he is chiefly concerned with the subjective orientation of the rhetor, we are more concerned with how rhetoric achieves transcendence of self with regard to the audience. With these criteria in mind, we should be able to identify something as artful. What sets artful political communication apart from other art forms is its primary illusion of social movement.

To this point in the article, we have been describing both art and discourse as neatly delineated categories, but having identified the essential features, we would like to make clear that what counts as artful or discursive is fluid; it is a matter of focus. Something can be more or less presentational, more or less artful, and more or less political, and all this can change depending on the context. The necessary conditions we have outlined can provide criteria for identifying artful objects (i.e., delineating which phenomena are rhetorical and which are not), knowing that presentational symbolism functions more qualitatively, these criteria are more useful in evaluating the degree to which any particular act of communication is rhetorical. To that end, we should encounter potentially artful communication by first asking, what are the limits or boundaries of the work? In other words, how does it set itself apart from the surrounding environment to create virtual space, time, or culture? Furthermore, will we want to consider what vital feelings are expressed? What are the dynamic tensions? Does it express growth or unfolding possibilities? And as our previous work demonstrates, in the case of a visual representation of a candidate (Taylor & Pye, 2019), the position of the viewer in relation to the subject is especially important; meaning, what is the point of view of the subject? And what is the symbolic relation to the viewer? We must also determine whether the communicative act serves as an end in itself or a means to some further end, and finally, we must evaluate the degree to which it helps the rhetor and the audience transcend their subjective selves.

Another way to ask this final point is to think about whether or not a feeling of society (i.e., a sense of biological, organismic, ontological unity) is expressed and to what degree. With this framework in mind, we have the necessary tools to analyze the ways in which Kamala Harris the candidate successfully confronted the typical media coverage of women candidates through an artfully mediated image of her own making. However, due to her role as a vice presidential candidate, and now the vice president, it is also important to look at how her campaign partner, Joe Biden, collaborated with her to co-create this image of a woman just as ready to lead as he is.

In the following sections, we show how Biden and Harris co-create a successful 2-for-1 narrative that lifts Kamala Harris beyond rigid and gendered expectations of rhetorical political performance, and how by violating those expectations, their team’s artful political communication achieves a primary illusion that allows for new, or at the very least nuanced, ways of understanding gender and leadership in American politics.

Analyzing the Biden/Harris Ticket as Artful Political Communication

“Ready to Get to Work”: Introducing Kamala as a Partner

Taking a page from Hillary Clinton’s seductive campaign style (Erickson & Thomson, 2004), Biden teased voters by announcing his vice presidential pick in stages. First, in mid-March he announced that he would pick a woman (Stevens, 2020). Then, in late July, he hinted, “I am not committed to naming any (of the potential candidates), but the people I’ve named, and among them there are four Black women” (Sullivan & Mucha, 2020). Finally, on August 11, in coordinated social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Biden announced that Kamala Harris would be his running mate. One way to approach analysis is to look at the discourse across mediums including social media, cable news, and print media; but drawing from Langer, we prioritize analysis of messages that contain visual or stylized content. Due to the constraints of each platform, social media posts are inherently bound in a way that has the potential to create virtual space, time, and culture. That is to say, social media posts are always artful to some degree.

I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris—a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants—as my running mate. Back when Kamala was Attorney General, she worked closely with Beau. I watched as they took on the big banks, lifted up working people, and protected women and kids from abuse. I was proud then, and I’m proud now to have her as my partner in this campaign. (Biden, 2020a)

It was the first time Biden referred to Harris as his “partner,” but it would not be the last, and the visuals from the campaign serve to reinforce the idea that he views Kamala as a true partner. On her social media accounts, Kamala announced her acceptance of the role with a more expected image and statement. Her Instagram announcement shows the two about to high five each other. She looks up at him laughing, and he beams down at her. The caption reads:

Joe Biden is a leader who can unify the American people, because he’s spent his life fighting for the American people. And as president, he will build an America that lives up to our ideals. I’m honored to join him as our party’s nominee for Vice President, and do everything it takes to make @JoeBiden our next Commander-in-Chief. (K. Harris, 2020a)

The point of view and relation to the subject suggest that she is taking a supportive role rather than one of equal partnership, and while there is nothing especially artful about this statement, in the days to come, the images posted by both candidates begin to move Harris to the front, communicating, at least visually, that she is Biden’s equal. In some images, Biden even takes on the role of supporter.

Messages from the candidates, their surrogates, and key media outlets reinforce their equal partnership. Much of Kamala’s messaging serves to simultaneously define herself and show her support for Joe, while Biden (a candidate who is largely already defined) unequivocally paints her as his equal. For example, in a video dated August 11, and posted to both their Instagram accounts on August 12, Biden asks her to join his ticket. At the top of the video, it is clear that Harris is a little late for the call. She says, “Hi, hi, hi, hi, sorry to keep you.” He responds, “No, that’s alright. You ready to go to work?” to which she emphatically replies, “Oh my god, I am so ready to go to work.” Later in the video he confirms, “Is the answer yes?” and she replies, “The answer is absolutely yes, Joe.” Of course, this video could be staged, but it does not feel that way and by Kamala Harris’s account on Hillary Clinton’s “You and Me Both” podcast, it was an authentic and real-time response. This brief conversation, sets the tone for their partnership without him directly stating anything about what he thinks of her. First of all, she has kept him waiting and he is completely okay with it. This part of the call could have been left out, but leaving it in signals that her time is equally as valuable as his. Furthermore, Biden does not assume she is going to immediately accept, and he asks her to confirm that she has accepted before he moves on. Treating her as an equal and acknowledging her agency in the decision should not be that surprising, but in light of the presidential leadership style voters witnessed over the previous 4 years, it is. Trump chose a vice president who would help to balance the ticket, and both have made it clear that Pence is playing a supportive role to Trump’s leading man. Biden has clearly chosen someone who will help govern alongside him.

Based on our previous research (Taylor & Pye, 2019), what is even more surprising than the tone of Biden’s announcement, is the front page of The New York Times that same day, with the banner headline “Harris Joins Biden Ticket, Achieving a First.” The accompanying image is a posterized photo of Kamala looking up and off into the distance, with notes of the Obama-era “Hope” poster ringing through. This image is particularly interesting in terms of the presentational/representational focus and fluidity because it is framed by words. The image takes up the majority of the page “above the fold,” with the text of several articles framing it. Similar to TIME magazine’s coverage of Hillary Clinton the surrounding text can affect the way a viewer experiences the image. Apart from the main headline and standard publication header, the titles of the articles are most noticeable and from left right they read, “Political Warrior Shaped by Life in 2 Worlds,” “Pick Seen as Safe But Energizing,” and “Woman of Color in No. 2 Slot of Major Party.” The latter two titles position Harris in a supporting role to Biden and are what we might expect from traditional media framing of women candidates. The lead headline, along with the banner headline, align with how Harris would describe herself. The phrasing of “Harris joins Biden” rather than “Biden names Harris,” describes her agency in a way that is rarely seen for vice presidential nominees, and even more rare for women. Likewise the description of her as a “political warrior” and someone navigating two worlds aligns with the messaging in the announcement video and her Instagram posts. Although it is not immediate which two worlds they are referencing—masculine and feminine, Black and Brown, progressive and pragmatic, aggressive and approachable—the corresponding article goes on to clarify:

Caustic when she needs to be but cautious on substantive issues more often than many liberals would like, Ms. Harris has spent her public life negotiating disparate orbits, fluent in both activist and establishment circles without ever feeling entirely anchored to either.

Harris might take issue with this description, but when viewing the front page as a whole (without reading the fine print of the articles) the image comes closer to what she and the Biden/Harris campaign team have co-created. Her photo is literally softened by the use of the filter, and the sky blue background that complements her outfit also has a softening effect. Her jacket also appears to be less stiff than the typical suit material, and instead of the customary pearls, she is wearing a gray scarf with a light blue paisley pattern. On one hand, she is not dressed like a politician. She appears approachable. On the other hand, her head is held high and her arms are crossed, exuding strength and power (Taylor & Pye, 2019). For some women this photo would say more about how the media sees Harris than how she sees herself but, as we will show, Harris is likely not a candidate who listens to media handlers and stylists. Like Obama was, she is a newcomer to presidential campaigning, but she is not new to politics. She has been artfully crafting her public image for decades, and the world is just now getting to see it.

The Artful Campaign: From “Barack and Joe” to “Joe + Kamala”

The photograph of Harris used by The New York Times was not the only Biden/Harris throwback to the Obama “Hope” poster. In fact, Shepard Fairy donated a similarly styled poster of John Lewis to the art fundraiser “Artists for Biden,” where more than “one hundred artists and estates donated work to help elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice President of the United States” (Fairey, 2020; Zwinner, n.d.). Picking up where Obama/Biden left off, the Biden/Harris campaign embraced art and artists in both official and less official ways, and their use of artful political communication extends and expands campaign surrogacy. Shepard Fairey’s original “Hope” poster was created organically by the artist and only after it gained popularity was it embraced by and became a powerful tool of the Barack Obama candidacy.

Just as the Obama campaign inspired art and encouraged grassroots campaign art, the Biden/Harris campaign understood the power of art from the jump. The New York Times declared “Joseph R. Biden Jr. is no aesthete” but he is an ally (Bowley, 2020). The article goes on to describe him as “someone arts leaders say has always embraced the practical usefulness of the arts as an economic engine, political action trigger and community builder.” In 2009, as vice president, he helped negotiate a stimulus package that included $50 million designated for the arts, and he has been explicit about the importance of the arts, even saying, “The future of who we are lies in the arts. . . . It is the expression of our soul” (Bowley, 2020). With that in mind, it is not surprising that grassroots art and art coalitions were supportive of and promoted by the Biden/Harris campaign. As Stoilas et al. (2020) explained, “Artists showed up like never before to turn out the vote—coalitions such as Joy to the Polls, Play for the Vote, Lift Every Vote, Wide Awakes, and Sankofa.” Additionally, the campaign commissioned Black artists to create murals in cities across the country (Bishara, 2020). Los Angeles–based artist Paul Zeaiter (2020), working with the BOND agency, created a series of posters for the Biden/Harris campaign. They included posterized portraits of the candidates, both individually and together, as well as similarly styled portraits of diverse citizens. These muralistic prints were shared heavily on social media, appeared as signs at campaign rallies, and at one point were sold in the official campaign shop. Zeaiter’s “United” image featuring both candidates became one of the most ubiquitous campaign images with Hillary Clinton and many others using it in their congratulatory tweets to the candidates (Clinton, 2020).

With regard to artful political communication, the “United” image is interesting for two key reasons. First, it includes a modification of the campaign logo that highlights the artful design of the original. The artwork as a whole also positions the candidates as equals. To better understand the power of the “United” image, we first need to take a closer look at the original logo. Beginning with the addition of Harris’s name to the Biden campaign logo, we already begin to see hints of the 2-for-1 partnership and a focus on presentation. Unlike the Obama/Biden logo, with its bright sun rising over a distant horizon, at first glance, the Biden/Harris logo seems to be completely discursive and solely representational. The impact of the minimalist logo rests on the use of bold typography, conveying a no-frills strength and confidence. It feels strong, stable, and balanced. Not surprisingly, blue is the more predominant color in all iterations of the logo, but red is used to accent the most distinct and, arguably, most artful part of the logo—the “E” in “Biden.” By removing the stem of the “E” it becomes a triple bar, denoting equality. The triple bar also hints at the red stripes in the American flag. The fact that both candidates’ names take up equal space is also noteworthy, as the vice presidential candidate typically gets less room regardless of the number of letters in the names. In the Obama/Biden logo, for example, Biden’s name was in a slightly smaller font even though both names have the same number of letters. This was also true for Trump/Pence. Clinton/Kaine used the same size font, but her name is longer, so it naturally took up more space.

In the only two other instances, where a woman candidate was on a major party ticket, Palin was given the same size font for her naturally shorter name, and Mondale’s name was ever so slightly wider than Ferraro’s even though their names each have seven letters. Notably, there was a line between “Mondale” and “Ferraro” that worked against any feeling of unity or equality that may have otherwise been created. As Robyn Kanner, senior creative adviser for the Biden/Harris campaign explains, the Biden/Harris logo “represents an America that is strong, bold, and unified,” and “the visual alignment of Biden and Harris in the logo helps convey the powerful impact of a strong partnership and unified America” (L. Smith, 2020).

In addition to creating symbolic equality and unity, the red triple bar also provides a design motif that can be used as the basis for additional campaign art. Although the “United” portrait does not use the campaign logo at all, it is still clearly tied to the campaign by using the same font and the same stylized “E” or red triple bar. Furthermore, the portrait of the candidates is balanced. Biden’s image is slightly larger, but Kamala is positioned in front of him. Based on our previous research, we know that frontality in photographs of women candidates is critical in achieving symbolic equality; so the fact that neither Biden or Harris is looking directly at the viewer, but up and forward, suggests a symbolic unity. If Biden were looking directly forward, and Harris were detached through the gaze, there would be a clear symbolic positioning that he is in charge. We do not have that here. What we have instead, is an image of two equals, each with their own points of view, each ready to lead.

“Day One Ready”

Documenting one of their first appearances together as a team, Harris and Biden further the notion of a true partnership in a video on his Instagram account wearing matching blue suits, matching black masks, and walking through complementary blue doors. They are walking in unison through the double doors, which must have been opened ahead of time to achieve this egalitarian effect. The doors serve to create a frame for the image, but more important, they allow them to walk toward the viewer side by side, in lockstep. The caption reads, “Let’s get to work, @KamalaHarris” (Biden, 2020b). The motion created is so forceful, and because the point of view is of someone directly in front of them, at eye level, as they move closer one almost feels as though they will need to move out of their way. Likewise, in the previews for “Kamala + Joe: A Socially Distanced Conversation” she is bursting through a set of ornate doors. In some versions, you catch a glimpse of Biden following her out. In others, he is absent from the frame altogether. The trailers also include an image of both candidates walking up a double-sided staircase. Harris is on one side, Biden on the other, and their steps are synchronized (Biden, 2020c).

Meanwhile, on her Instagram account, Harris begins to fill in parts of her story that many of Biden’s supporters might not know. In a video posted on August 12, she explains that she was “raised to take action,” sharing that as her mother raised “two Black daughters,” she knew they “would be treated differently because of how they looked” (K. Harris, 2020a). She starts by addressing the two things that make her a historic choice—her race and her gender. The video positions her background as a positive, which is to be expected from a woman raised by a woman who told her, “If you don’t define yourself people will try to define you” (Rani, 2020). On August 13, she posted an image of herself as a baby with her South Asian mother. While it is not unusual to see old family photos of candidates, this feels different. The photo is not part of a series or collage, it is posted as a single image on Harris’s (2020b) Instagram, giving the feeling that it was carefully selected by her (even though we know, logically speaking, that she probably has a staffer posting to Instagram on her behalf). Although we are looking at an infant Kamala, standing less than 2 feet at the time, the camera is positioned so low that she is looking us right in the eye—a baby girl ready to venture out into the world with her mother right behind her. From a campaign strategy perspective, this photo works to tell the world that Kamala is not just the first Black woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket, she is also the first Brown woman, given that her mother was an Indian. The media has tended to focus more on her Blackness, so she may have chosen this image to help define herself more fully as that “political warrior shaped by life in 2 worlds” (Acker, 2020). However, it does not have to be interpreted this strategically, as this photo can also serve as an end in itself. The caption accompanying the image states, “My mother always use [sic] to say, ‘Don’t just sit around and complain about things. Do something.’ I dearly wish she were here with us this week.” The effect is a bittersweet combined sensation of a mother’s pride and a daughter’s longing (K. Harris, 2020b).

With this and in subsequent Instagram posts, we begin to see her in the way she sees herself, or at least in the way she wants voters to see her. At times, both candidates appear to move Harris to the front. While she often makes a point to say, discursively, that she is ready to support Joe, the images tell a slightly different story. There’s an image of her signing documents with a blurry Biden in the background (K. Harris, 2020c). Kamala is front and center, smiling widely, and if you did not know any better, you would think she was the candidate. We also see them walking on stage together with a giant American flag as the backdrop, as they walk again in lockstep, but she is in front, just slightly ahead of him. In another post, both candidates are shown looking up, hands joined. The flag behind them creates a red triple bar of equality between their bodies, and he is ever so slightly pointing at her (K. Harris, 2020d).

An even more powerful image was posted to Biden’s Instagram on August 15 (Biden, 2020b). The very egalitarian caption read, “Come January, there won’t be any time to waste repairing the damage of the last four years and beginning the work of building back better. @KamalaHarris and I are ready to get to work on day one.” Yet the image itself shows Harris in the foreground and Biden behind her. The low camera angle and camera position put Kamala front and center, with a diminutive Joe in the background. The light blue background and campaign logo tell us that this is an official campaign image, meaning the framing of this image is intentional. Social semiotics (Taylor & Pye, 2019) tell us that viewers and the audience form a point of view initially through sightline, arrangement of images, positional, gaze—among other attributes. With the accompanying tagline, the message is clear, we are both equally “day one ready” and voters will get two leaders for the price of one (Biden, 2020b).

“Laced Up and Ready to Win”

As previously mentioned, Kamala’s Instagram includes many images that add to the 2-for-1 narrative. Sprinkled among those images are several depictions of her coming down or going up the stairs of a plane. This type of deplaning is something we are more accustomed to seeing with sitting presidents, so the inclusion of multiple plane images is curious. Not only do they present her as a leader on par with Biden, they also show her bucking the expected style norms for women candidates. For example, on September 7, 2020, Kamala Harris stepped off a plane in Milwaukee for the first of her campaign trips as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Cameras were waiting to capture her historic landing. What was most notable was the ease with which she strutted past them to the black SUV that awaited her. Her attire highlighted her comfortable confidence—a dark blazer worn over a T-shirt and jeans, matched with black Converse Chuck Taylor All Star shoes. The Chucks are not a new thing for her. As she explained to The Washington Post in 2018,

I have a whole collection of Chuck Taylors: a black leather pair, a white pair, I have the kind that don’t lace, the kind that do lace, the kind I wear in the hot weather, the kind I wear in the cold weather, and the platform kind for when I’m wearing a pantsuit. (Silman, 2018)

However, a high-profile candidate sporting sneakers so regularly was new to voters, especially a woman. As Goldberg (2020) observed,

In the past three months, she’s worn them to speak (and dance) at a drive-in rally in Orlando, to attend a voter mobilization event in Las Vegas, to walk around downtown Salt Lake City, to greet crowds of supporters lining the streets (many of whom were sporting their own pairs of Chucks), to appear on an episode of Desus & Mero (“I just love them!” she told the talk-show hosts. “It’s either Chucks or heels . . . always has been.”), to tour training facilities in Milwaukee, and, yes, to step off the jet planes that help her traverse the country as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. These images of her in sneakers and Tims are not accidental. While they may be an authentic expression of her true self, they are also a way she can define herself as practical, cool, ready to run, and “literally—down to earth.”

She plays with gender expectations by combining pantsuits with jeans, sneakers with jetways, and, of course, pearls and heels every so often (just so we know she can do that look too), but she wears the Chucks like a badge of honor and her surrogates seem proud of this version of her too. Her husband, Douglas Emhoff, shared a tweet showing video of that Milwaukee trip, commenting “The @KamalaHarris I know wears Chucks and jeans . . . and now you all know too!” (Emhoff, 2020). Her niece, Meena Harris, shared a behind-the-scenes video of Kamala at a drive-up campaign rally, commenting, “I am absolutely unable to get over this video of @KamalaHarris dancing in the rain in chucks.” Meena Harris (M. Harris, 2020c) also posted a TikTok of her “Auntie Kamala” hustling down the stairs in Timberlands to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Girls in the Hood.” The camera is positioned low, so the viewer is looking up at Kamala. If the point of this post is to communicate that Kamala has street cred, the lyrics really drive that home. As she deplanes, we hear “You could check the throwback pics, I been that b— (Ah)I’m a hot girl, I do hot s—- (I do hot s—-),” suggesting that this isn’t a new persona. This is the Kamala her friends and family know.

Whether these images are organic or coordinated, her surrogates amplify the authenticity of the image she wants to project to the world, and they can take it one step further. Harris and Biden cannot veer too far outside the campaign norms, but surrogates like her husband and niece are not bound by those same expectations. For instance, in addition to the Timberlands post, Meena Harris also created another video (M. Harris, 2020) where she lip-syncs to Kamala Harris’s audio from the vice presidential debate, wearing a pink blazer and saying “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. I’m speaking.” In Meena’s rendition she then cuts to video of her in an orange hoodie, flipping off the camera and lip syncing to “Girls in the Hood”—“F—- bein’ good, I’m a bad b— (Ah) I’m sick of m———tryna tell me how to live (F—-y’all)” (M. Harris, 2020b). For the most part, it appears to work in Kamala’s favor. Comments on Meena Harris’s Instagram include statements like “@jhenebenson Yesss nah this my Vice President ” and “@kcgarza79 Them Timberlands. All she needs is some hoops. Get it madam Vice President!” Individually, these images communicate one thing. Collectively, they paint a picture of Kamala as a whole human being. Someone who does not fit neatly into gendered or racialized stereotypes, and someone who, in the words of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is “a certified badass” (Biden, 2020d).

Vote for Her: “Girl in the Mirror” and “That Little Girl Was Me”

While all the images we have discussed contributed to the 2-for-1 narrative, there were two pivotal memes that did not come from the candidates themselves, but were shared by them or their surrogates, that drove the message home. The “Girl in the Mirror” video from the Lincoln Project and the “That Little Girl Was Me” photo illustration captured and conveyed the feeling that voting for Biden was bigger than one president. As the video suggests and the mural supports, it was a vote for women and little girls everywhere. It was really a “vote for her.”

On October 16, 2020, The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political action committee, tweeted an ad in support of Biden/Harris along with the words “Vote for change. Vote for her.” The 90-second spot begins with an image of a young girl looking in the mirror. The narrator directs viewers to

imagine a young girl looking in the mirror, searching for role models in the world to give her hope that one day she, too, can make a difference. Now imagine how she feels when she watches women being verbally attacked.

The video cuts to various clips of Trump insulting and verbally attacking women. He says things like “What a stupid question, but I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.” He calls Harris a “monster,” and speaking about Rosie O’Donnell, he says, “I’d look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, and I’d say ‘You’re fired.’” Spliced in between the news clips of Trump are scenes of young girls. In each scene, the camera is close up on the girl’s face, and you can see the light of a television screen flickering in her serious eyes. The narrator warns, “Your daughters are listening and absorbing that message right in front of your eyes.”

The message is powerful, and for anyone who sees themselves or a little girl they love in those images, it is viscerally painful. The video shifts to women and girls watching Kamala Harris, with the narrator saying, “Now imagine a different future, a future with a president who doesn’t just value a female voice, but chooses one to be his right . . . hand . . . woman.” There is a slight pause before “hand” and “woman” that calls attention to the fact that the phrase is usually “right-hand man.” The background music rises and swells in a way that feels like pride and hope as the narrator goes on to say, “A strong woman, a woman with compassion, a woman unafraid to take on a bully.” Timed to the word “unafraid” the video cuts to an image of the “Fearless Girl” statue on Wall Street that has become a symbol, albeit a fraught one, of modern feminism. The video ends with a montage of girls of various races, ages, and backgrounds looking in mirrors and the words “Imagine that little girl in the mirror, because that little girl is yours, and your actions on November 3rd will define who she sees.” With those final words we see a girl standing in a city, the modern equivalent of the “Fearless Girl.” The camera angle is low, so we are looking up at her. She is looking us directly in the eye with a serious expression, high rises flank her, and the words “Vote for change. Vote for her” are both spoken and written on the screen. The juxtaposition of the two candidates could not be more powerful, and it is easy to forget that Harris is not Trump’s opponent, which might just be the desired effect. Although neither candidate shared the video directly, it was shared widely on social media and covered by mainstream media outlets.

Interestingly, the “Girl in the Mirror” video was similar in tone and content to a video released by the Clinton campaign 4 years prior, a video that The New York Times notes, “Did not work” (Ember, 2020). While it’s hard to say if this video “worked” to help Harris win, there are some important differences that may have made it more impactful. For one, The Lincoln Project served as an unofficial (and possibly unwanted) surrogate, allowing them to take more risks than the official campaign team. It is also important to point out that Clinton was running directly against Trump and is a White woman. By going after Harris, who is not his direct opponent, Trump is “punching down.” Calling a Black woman a “monster” adds racism to his already egregious sexist comments. Plus, the ad helped to extend a previous narrative that had started with the primary debates.

During the second night of primary debates, Harris challenged Biden over his record on busing as a means to combat segregation in schools (Rascoe, 2019). Directing her comments to Biden during the debate, she said,

I do not believe you are a racist and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground but I also believe, and it’s personal and I was actually very . . . it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country, and it was not only that, but 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. (Paz, 2019)

She followed that up with an Instagram post of a photo of herself as a young girl. The caption read, “There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me. #DemDebate” (K. Harris, 2019).

Inspired by this moment, activist and entrepreneur Gordon Jones collaborated with artist Bria Goeller to create “That Little Girl Was Me,” an image of the current Kamala Harris walking down the street in heels, sporting a suit and carrying a briefcase. The shadow cast on the wall is a little girl. To be more specific, the shadow is the likeness of Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old depicted staring down a mob of segregationists in Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We Live All With” (E. D. Smith, 2020). Originally created for Jones’s clothing brand, Good Trubble, in the wake of Harris becoming the vice president–elect, the image went viral and was even shared by Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on November 7, 2020, with the comment, “Wow.” (King, 2020).

Although it started as an attack on his record, to his credit, Biden did not shy away from the “That Little Girl Was Me” narrative. On election day, in a nod to the Jones–Goeller image, a post on his Instagram showed a backlit silhouette of Harris carrying an umbrella and speaking in the rain. Her shadowed figure was framed by a bright light, and his caption read,

Vote for her today—the future Vice President of the United States.

Vote so that little girls across the country can see themselves and know that they can do it too.

Vote for @KamalaHarris. (Biden, 2020e)

He did not say that he would be the bridge on the path to our first Black vice president, or our first Asian American vice president, or our first woman vice president, but he did not have to. Whether folks voted for Joe or voted for Kamala throughout the campaign, the message was clear. They would lead together, 2-for-1, United.

The message that the Biden/Harris victory would usher in a new era of unity continued into their acceptance as well. The first public indications that Biden was accepting the victory came on social media and on his website. On the morning of November 7, he tweeted,

America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country.

The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans—whether you voted for me or not.

I will keep the faith that you have placed in me. (Biden, 2020f)

The tweet contained a link to a video. Notably, the video did not feature Biden or Harris. Instead, the video begins with a military marching beat that leads into Ray Charles’s rendition of “America, the Beautiful” building over several pictorial landscapes—a rural church, a downtown cityscape, to a highway cutting through amber hills, a seaside town. They could be from anywhere in the United States (although in actuality they happen to be mostly shots from Marin County in Northern California). Next, we see a young woman, a swimmer, walking away from the camera and carrying a picture frame to the pool. This scene is followed by a young man who from a distance looks a bit like a young Muhammad Ali. He is also carrying a frame as he walks past a mural of the actual Ali. We see scenes of Latinx farmworkers, a young photographer, a Black-owned, woman-owned barbershop, a medical clinic, and a White, male biker. In each of these scenes, at least one person is strategically framed within a literal picture frame. We also see young Black, twin surfers; construction workers; a subway rider; a child doing distance learning on Zoom; a queer marriage ceremony; a scuba diver; a woman wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt; people with disabilities; a drag queen; ranchers; a Muslim praying; and, a welder. It’s a montage of diverse individuals, many of whom are not usually so explicitly included in political communication of any kind, and all are literally framed as art. As both the song and video reach a crescendo with the familiar words “From Sea to Shining Sea,” the final scene shows a sun rising over a shimmering sea, and the words “A COUNTRY for all Americans. A FUTURE for all Americans. A PRESIDENT for all Americans.” Neither Biden nor Harris are ever mentioned.

To political communication scholars, this video should feel familiar. In 1984, the Reagan campaign released what was at the time considered a groundbreaking ad. As Hart (1999) tells us, “Because television’s pictures are so memorizing, politicians have learned how to produce their own character profiles (for example, Ronald Reagan’s gorgeous 1984 convention film, Morning in America),” resulting in the feeling that we know them, and we are friends. Hart (1999) warns that this feeling of friendship is false and bad for democracy.

He may be right about the Reagan film, but based on the framework we have outlined in this article, the “America, the Beautiful” video is different. It may be the most artful communication of this or any recent political campaign, due in large part to the fact that it was not actually part of the campaign, and the friend being profiled is us. Through this video Biden and Harris shift the focus from themselves to “The People,” communicating this as a victory for all Americans. By not including any overt references to themselves or to any party, and by including so many diverse faces, bodies, occupations, and locations, they create a vision of a unified country. This video was not shared to inspire people to vote for them, it was shared to inspire people. It is an end in itself and it opens up the potential for any American to transcend themselves by identifying with the feeling of society it expresses.

Discussion and Moving Forward

We have argued there are two primary attributes to artful political communication: it facilitates social movement through transcendence of self; while also reimagining political rhetoric that accounts for meaning beyond the barriers of rigid discursive constraint. Just as this article is headed for publication, TIME’s cover image for the month of December 2020 named Biden and Harris “Time’s Person of the Year.” It is the first time that TIME has named a vice president the person of the year (Atler, 2020), and of course, in the name alone, TIME has united them as one. Where we found that TIME had conjoined Hillary and Bill Clinton as one candidate, making them an attached and vulnerable unit (Taylor & Pye, 2019), just 4 years later, TIME unites and celebrates that unity, stating, “Together, they offered restoration and renewal in a single ticket” (Atler, 2020). The story inside the fold takes from the same photo imagery we have discussed here, citing their visual partnership on Instagram and their Biden/Harris website. The cover image works visually toward equality; although Biden achieves frontality, which does communicate authority (Taylor & Pye, 2019), he is not situated above her, but beside her, and both pairs of their eyes gaze up, and to the future, symbolizing that TIME sees them as partners. Also, importantly, the structure of this image very much mimics the Paul Zeiter “United” image used as artful political communication by the campaign—showcasing that TIME is taking their framing cue from the candidates and their social media—very different indeed than TIME’s coverage of Hillary just 4 years prior. Here, the Biden/Harris ticket not only achieves a transcendence of celebrating difference in American politics but also achieves a certain agency in how visual representation is mediated from the candidate’s message and filters into mainstream consumption.

In thinking about how this project moves forward, we would be remiss not to think through the potential limitations of artful political communication. In looking at presidential campaign visuals over the past half century, few are as memorable as Obama’s. The Obama logo, for example, captured the feelings made explicit in his campaign “slogan” of “Hope” and “Change.” Even though there is a linguistic element here, the symbolism is mostly abstract, and it is no coincidence that one of the words is a feeling. Rather than making discursive promises about taxes or employment, what he was promising was that the United States would feel different, that life would feel better. It is powerful stuff, and it turned out to be a very effective way to win an election. But at what cost?

There are certain benefits to campaigning artfully. You can avoid concrete claims that are easy to pick apart and you can make abstract promises that are hard to disprove, plus, it is evocative—it feels good. On the other hand, these benefits create certain challenges. Because you do not make specific claims, the audience can (and does) fill those in for themselves. For instance, Obama promised a feeling of “Hope,” and for those that voted for him, he may have delivered that on the first night of his election, but then what? And what were they all hoping for? Some may have been hoping for better health care, others a better job, some an end to a war, others relief from student loans, while some might be hoping for citizenship, and myriad other hopes and dreams that he may or may not have been able to or even intended to address in his first 4 years. At least a president who says, “Read my lips, no new taxes” like George Herbert Walker Bush did in 1988 knows exactly what he has promised and what he has got to do to keep that promise. Obama’s promise was vague, abstract, and ultimately, impossible to keep. In this way, we find enormous value in the critiques offered through Hart, Jamieson, and Edelman; however, like Langer, we believe that artful political communication is a both/and, where political art achieves representational and presentational symbolism, the discursive and logical, but with attention to the evocative, and feeling created by affect.

In a sense, the evocative can be exploited. As Hart and Jamieson have argued, if we are driven by feeling, only, we end up with a President Trump, a political entertainer who benefits from appeals to emotion, especially emotion that taps into inherent personal and political fears. As the Trump presidency has solidified, appeals to emotion, positive or negative, will win hearts and minds. That is not to say that artful political communication should be avoided. We argue that within our framework of artful political communication, a candidate should combine artful campaigning with a corresponding discursive message to achieve momentum and ultimately social movement and progressive change. We have argued here that the Biden/Harris ticket did achieve both, and although we did not unpack the corresponding discourse of “Building Back Better” from their campaign slogan, the Biden/Harris ticket never relied solely on the visual representation of “Day one ready” but also the corresponding discursive heft; ultimately however, we have also shown through artful political communication that “Building Back Better” would not have worked without the corresponding and intentional political visual rhetoric by the Biden/Harris team.

From political communication, including Trent, Hart, and Jamieson to the political philosophy of Edelman and Langer, especially, we contend that this site of struggle in our field is an important one because it allows us as scholars to untangle certain assumptions embedded ideologically and epistemologically in how we view a woman’s place in presidential leadership. From how Biden chose Harris, to the surrogates that advanced both of their visual narratives, we have argued that the story of their visual campaign was clear, a vote for me is a vote for her, and we are not threatened by a 2-for-1 narrative; in fact, we will embrace it. To that end, the Biden/Harris team has made a bold move toward combatting hegemonic constraints that have traditionally been cultivated and deployed to silence political women, and their agency in presidential rhetoric.