You lose if social media hates you

The first US Presidential TV debate took place in 1960 between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Kennedy looked relaxed, tanned and photogenic. Nixon looked uncomfortable and sweaty. That, said some analysts, turned the tide in the elections. It was the closest elections till then with Kennedy getting 34.2 million popular votes and Nixon getting 34.1m. Some have even theorized that had the debate not taken place, then Nixon would have won. Nixon indeed learned from his mistakes and won comfortably in 1968 followed by a landslide in 1972 where he got 520/538 electoral college votes.

In 1980, the media and polls put Ronald Reagan behind, but he had been a Hollywood star. He was charming and photogenic. He looked great on TV. The media had missed the Reagan wave. He got 489 electoral college votes in 1980 and 525 in 1984. In 1992 a charismatic Bill Clinton beat a jaded George Bush. In 2000, his son George W kept his wits after a lengthy Al Gore discourse on his economic expertise and Internet savvy. (Gore is supposed to have coined the term Information Highway) Bush Jr quipped, “I’m beginning to think not only did he (Gore) invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math.” That stole the show, and Bush was declared winner of the TV debate. He won the Presidency too.

Social Media era

In 2008, Senator John McCain was a good Republican candidate, Vietnam war veteran, a fine public speaker and generally likeable. He picked up a woman as his running mate: Sarah Palin. But there was just one hitch. McCain was “not on the computer”.

His rival, till then an unknown and inexperienced (in national politics) entity, was all over social media: Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn. He and his campaign used social media to the hilt and almost everything he did went viral. Of course, you know I am talking about Barack Obama. In the end it was a cakewalk for Obama who won easily with 365 electoral college votes. Interestingly his Vice President was also loved by social media as witnessed by many spoof accounts in his name and hilarious memes. That was Joe Biden, and his campaign team managed to keep him out of trouble in the Presidential campaign of 2019-20, which he subsequently won.

The 2016 elections couldn’t have been more contrasted. On one side was Donald Trump who was simply loved by social media. Trump had endless memes and viral issues going in his name. On the other side was Hillary Clinton, who for some reason was absolutely hated on social media. All her errors and faults were magnified. She herself seemed uncomfortable with it all. Hillary even tried to back a company which would certify memes and introduce watermarks to distinguish from the “fake” and “original memes”. That’s not how the Internet works. She had mastered the mainstream media in which Trump had been declared a demon. But social media destroyed her.

Kamala Harris went the Hillary way. She looked quite uncomfortable in social media circles. All her faults and gaffes were magnified. Her word salads became the subject of umpteen memes and videos. She failed to appear on the biggest show of them all: The Joe Rogan podcast. By now Biden had become an Internet laughingstock and Kamala couldn’t distance herself from him.

Trump in contrast had recovered from the debacle of 2020-21 where Covid showed all world leaders in bad light, there was the January 6 insurrection and his social media bans silenced him. He went on Joe Rogan, getting in the range of 50 million views on YouTube alone. (Its primary platform is Spotify) In a way his 2024 social media campaign was greater than his 2016 one and no wonder he’s won probably the best Republican campaign since 1988.

There was a time when mainstream media selected global leaders. Now the crown has been passed to social media.