The only advice I’d give the Biden campaign is to go to war with the NYT. They’re even less popular than Biden or Trump, would form a good rallying cry, and reframes the campaign to be an underdog attempt to push good policy against elites who don’t want it. “NYT is for the billionaires, we’re not.”
You don't undermine "the press"
You talk up how it used to be and wonder what happened to a formerly great institution
"when I first got into politics, the New York Times was the paper of record, neutral, fair. Now it just shills for the rich, what happened to its standards?"
Oh, it's a war of words, but it's a Biden style very, very polite war of words, play up to the decades of experience, slightly parody yourself with a "back in my day" routine
But do it in such a way that anyone trained to use language well like, say, journalists, can see the vicious bards
Damnit, that was meant to be vicious barbs. Bards somehow works but in a slightly different way (I'm playing Civ6 in the other window, that's the sort of name your rock bands get regularly)
Technically, FDR "undermined the press" by going directly to the people with his radio "fireside chats." The press was weighted heavily against FDR & FDR wasn't afraid to criticize the press when it was warranted.
A good thing to do is to evaluate institutions and people by their actual actions and impacts, instead of your preconceived “category” for them. For example, I keep telling people, the NYT is just Facebook, and many are finding it an instructive framing for rethinking their reactions.
