Authentic Actors Debate #9

            Looking at the ninth Democratic Presidential debate we are brought to Las Vegas where Bernie Sanders had been surging in the polls after a recent Iowa caucus win and some stumbling from both the Biden and Warren campaigns along the presidential trail. Mast explains that, “Actors take on meanings in relation to other actors in the drama, and in relation to the settings, plots, and vagaries of everyday life that can be picked up by a video camera” (mast 11) In the ninth debate we saw that the actors or rather, candidates, in the ninth debate would be defined by their reactions to the emergence of Mike Bloomberg as a candidate and the opportunity he presented to these actors to redefine their own images under the glowing light of positive relativity to the former New York Mayor.

            We can start by looking at Joe Biden’s performance to analyze how the former Vice President made use of the new actor (Mike Bloomberg) to reshape how he was perceived by a national audience. Mast explains the authenticity is prized in actors, but isn’t inherent to any one person rather it is something that is interpretative and can be shaped by political posturing. In this campaign the political values of the democratic party had been dragged to the left by progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and therefore redefined what it meant to be a Democrat; however, because these policies also were focused around social and economic equity the political trait of authenticity started to become aligned around candidates level of support of these more progressive ideas. This party reposturing left Joe Biden fairly far to the right when it came to his policy and left him looking out of touch and inauthentic when it came to his calls for political change, but with Mike Bloomberg entering the fray as essentially a billionaire republican Joe was given a golden opportunity in the ninth debate.

            Biden, along with the other candidates, attacked Bloomberg on everything from his failed stop and frisk policies (racial injustices), to lack of political prowess, and finally his history of sexual harassment and litany of non-disclosure agreements that paid his female employees to keep quite about such instances. Where Biden had been relegated to the position of the older moderate Democrat who was out of touch with the changing tides, Mike Bloomberg allowed for a rebalancing of the playing field. Because Bloomberg was so un-progressive in his platform and because of his history of blatant racial and sexual offenses he allowed for the perception of Joe Biden to shift by giving the Vice President opportunities to call out the blatantly bad billionaire track record that mayor bloomberg had.

            While Bernie mostly stayed on brand in this debate and attacked Bloomberg on par with the amount that other candidates did it just didn’t seem to have the same effect. We already knew that Bernie stood for progressive economic and social justice reform, and as an audience America didn’t need to see Bernie get angry about these issues in relation to Bloomberg in particular to let us know what Senator Sanders stood for; however, with Biden we got to see him take a fiery stance in opposition to Bloomberg that gave off the perception that he was inching closer towards some of the progressive ideals other candidates stood for, which only helped his campaign at the conclusion of this debate.