Samuel Rousseau is a lecturer in political communication at Sciences-Po Paris.
The American night finally seems to be coming to an end as twists and misunderstandings fade away.
On CNN, the video walls have stopped waltzing to the rhythm of statistics and theories on legal remedies.
The interventions, at the same time pathetic and astonishing of the resident of the White House pass after the projects of the President-elect.
In the hubbub, Joe Biden's words remained rare, reassuring, in harmony with the ambivalence of the country.
A discretion in the image of his campaign: no wave, but a vague promise to bring people together.
We no longer know if the famous "
let's count all the votes
" was the mantra of the future President or of journalists.
In any case, it was the life jacket of a resisting democracy, carried by the greatest electoral mobilization in its history, its traditional media and its local institutions, whether they are Democrats or Republican.
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This victory is therefore not that of the Democratic Party which is retreating in Congress, nor the announced rout of a Donald Trump who increases the number of his voters despite the scandals and deaths of the Covid.
This success is based on a minimalist communication strategy built in symbolism, that is to say the ability to let others project themselves and engage in significant moments;
rather than in the emblematic, ie in the unilateral and untimely use of signs intended to seduce.
A bet won by Joe Biden by knocking down three trump cards to seduce an electorate in crisis.
First, the organization of the speech.
Combining a program of social and environmental modernization but moderate on controversial subjects such as firearms with a relatively calm verve, he let speak more than he committed.
Empathetic and clear, but not moralistic, with Black Lives Matter or the anti-masks, he chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, a black woman, but a figure ambivalent enough for everyone to find their account.
Above all, he did not bet everything on social networks, their radicalism and the brevity that they impose on thought as on the news.
His twitter account has some 6,800 tweets against more than 58,100 for his opponent.
It remains to be seen whether Joe Biden will be able to govern his country, with a hostile Senate, a navel-blue party and above all an opinion that is not divided but out of step.
Second card, mastery of duration.
Constant if not inspiring, he let the most extreme elements of his camp run out of steam, thus escaping the exercise of an impossible synthesis.
Joe Biden has been consistent with his image of a seasoned and humble politician, refusing invective or "
blows
" and has established himself as a possibility of "
normalcy
" so as not to completely lock himself in the anti-Trump vote .
Like Bergson's sugar, it allowed itself to melt to coincide with current events rather than with history, with impatience rather than ideology.
And it is the recourse to Barack Obama that best sheds light on the third map: reconnecting with the country's cultural paradoxes, embracing division.
It wasn't about mobilizing communities, but about using this divisive former President and radical Democratic activists to create emotion and uplift participation in key states, such as Pennsylvania.
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The Covid hit the crisis of adequacy between the person Trump and the presidential office, Joe Biden played on the American ambivalence in the face of the incarnation of the federal state, one of the paradoxes of this tense society.
“
Most think the government is doing the wrong thing;
but everyone thinks that the government must constantly act and put everything in hand
, ”wrote Tocqueville of the Americans.
To impose the question of the rights and duties of an American President in the health crisis, it was to restrict the choice between a Head of State and a leader itself.
It remains to be seen whether Joe Biden will be able to govern his country, with a hostile Senate, a naval party and above all an opinion that is not divided but rather out of phase.
2016 had been the disinformation campaign, 2020 was the end of the debate.
End of the televised debate in the name of the Covid, end of the debate of ideas since the outgoing candidate has not even developed a program, end of the citizen debate since some have chosen conspiracy and others have chosen to cancel culture.
For Joe Biden, getting out of seductive discretion will be an unnatural step but essential to repair, a little, America and the world.
Campaigns are won by refocusing on the ambivalences of the moment, but governing a nation requires communication, that is to say "
showing its coherence in images and positively sharing the implications to nurture a collective commitment
", as Stéphane Fouks recently explained in his
Media Pandemic
.
It will first be necessary to negotiate the turn of an early management of the Covid crisis in the United States.
Above all, the new President will have to make a success of the syntheses and assume the choices to restore to this nation a capacity to project itself into an ideal rhyme with progress and no longer with withdrawal into categorical anxieties.
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For Joe Biden, getting out of seductive discretion will be an unnatural step but essential to repair, a little, America and the world.
He has yet to prove that he can.