2020 Biden-Harris Presidential Campaign Commercials
The Empathy Strategy in a Time of Plague
The playlist of videos available above serves as a somber, historical record of one of the most singular election cycles in American history. To watch the 2020 Biden-Harris presidential campaign commercials is to revisit a nation in the grip of a triple crisis: a deadly pandemic, a collapsing economy, and a reckoning with racial justice.
In previous eras, challengers to an incumbent president typically run on energy, youth, or a promise of revolution. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, however, ran on something far quieter and, in 2020, far more radical: reassurance. The commercials you are about to view are artifacts of a campaign that bet the White House on the belief that a traumatized country didn’t want a revolution—it wanted a healer.
The Biden-Harris media strategy was a disciplined exercise in mood management. While President Donald Trump’s advertising was loud, kinetic, and focused on “Law and Order,” the Biden ads were deliberately calm. They spoke in lower registers. They featured piano scores rather than martial drums. They were designed to lower the temperature of the electorate, offering competence as the ultimate antidote to chaos.
The Core Narrative: The Battle for the Soul of the Nation
The central architecture of the Biden advertising campaign was established the moment he entered the race: “The Battle for the Soul of the Nation.”
Most presidential campaigns pivot to the economy in the general election. The Biden team, however, kept their focus relentlessly on character. The commercials frequently referenced the 2017 Charlottesville protests as the reason for Biden’s candidacy, framing the election not as a contest between Republican and Democrat, but between American values and an aberration.
You will see this theme woven through the playlist. Commercials like “Character” and “Decency” did not dwell on the minutiae of tax policy. Instead, they juxtaposed images of Biden comforting grieving families with images of President Trump’s most polarizing moments. The strategy was to make the election a referendum on moral exhaustion. The ads whispered a seductive promise to the suburban swing voter: If you vote for Joe, you won’t have to think about politics every single day.
The Pandemic Pivot: The Empty Chair
The COVID-19 pandemic rewrote the rules of political advertising, and the Biden campaign adapted by turning the virus into an indictment of leadership.
The visual language of the 2020 Biden-Harris presidential campaign commercials is defined by the artifacts of the plague year. You will see Biden speaking through a black mask—a visual that Trump mocked, but which the Biden campaign embraced as a symbol of responsible leadership. You will see commercials filmed in Biden’s home studio in Delaware, the so-called “basement campaign,” which was framed not as hiding, but as modeling safe behavior.
The most devastating ads of this genre were the “Empty Chair” spots. These commercials focused on the human toll of the virus—the empty seats at the dinner table, the grandparents waving through windows, the shuttered small businesses. By linking this grief directly to Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis, the ads successfully pierced the incumbent’s claims of economic prowess. They argued that you couldn’t fix the economy until you fixed the virus, and you couldn’t fix the virus if you didn’t believe in science.
Scranton vs. Park Avenue: Reclaiming the Working Class
While the “Soul of the Nation” provided the moral air cover, the economic ground war was fought under the banner of “Scranton vs. Park Avenue.”
The Biden campaign was acutely aware that the Democratic Party had been bleeding white working-class voters in the Rust Belt. To stop the bleeding, the advertising relentlessly emphasized Biden’s biography. The ads you will watch are filled with black-and-white photos of a young Joe Biden in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They highlight his middle-class upbringing, his Amtrak commutes, and his stutter.
This was a strategic branding effort to inoculate Biden against the “radical socialist” label that the Trump campaign attempted to affix to him. It is hard to paint a man as a dangerous revolutionary when his commercials look like Norman Rockwell paintings.
The “Scranton vs. Park Avenue” framework allowed the campaign to attack Trump’s signature legislative achievement—the 2017 tax cuts—as a giveaway to the wealthy. Ads like “The ZIP Code” argued that Trump saw the world from the penthouse, while Biden saw it from the kitchen table. This populist pivot was essential in winning back the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
The Harris Factor: Making History
Senator Kamala Harris’s presence on the ticket added a historic dimension to the advertising. As the first female, Black, and South Asian Vice Presidential nominee, her inclusion energized the Democratic base.
The commercials featuring Harris often focused on the theme of “Possibility.” They connected her personal story—the daughter of immigrants who became a prosecutor and a Senator—to the broader American story of progress. While the Biden ads were often about restoration (looking back to a better time), the Harris ads were about the future.
Furthermore, the “Biden-Harris” branding in the commercials was designed to project a team dynamic, contrasting with the often solo nature of the Trump presidency. The ads showed them socially distanced but working together, reinforcing the message that help was on the way.
The Tactical Shift: Instruction as Persuasion
One often-overlooked aspect of the 2020 ad war was the shift toward instructional advertising. Because of the massive increase in mail-in voting, the Biden campaign spent millions on ads that simply taught people how to vote.
These commercials were unglamorous but vital. They featured clear graphics explaining deadlines, drop boxes, and signature requirements. By demystifying the process, the campaign turned the act of voting into a manageable logistical task rather than a frightening health risk.
The Legacy of the 2020 Ads
As you explore the videos above, you are looking at a campaign that won by refusing to take the bait. The 2020 Biden-Harris presidential campaign commercials are notable for what they lack: they lack the frenzy, the name-calling, and the conspiratorial tone of the era.
They are calm, deliberate, and undeniably heavy. They reflect a candidate who understood that the nation was grieving—for its dead, for its jobs, and for its sense of normal. The genius of the Biden advertising strategy was its recognition that in a time of screaming chaos, the most powerful sound in the world is a quiet, steady voice promising that everything is going to be okay.
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