Why George Clooney’s op-ed on Biden’s candidacy worked so well
The actor gave frustrated Democrats a voice when they were feeling silenced.
Thanks for reading Pitches Get Stitches. I’m Jake. I run Opinioned, a consultancy that gives companies an in-house editor. I help leaders refine compelling ideas for thought leadership and publish their writing in top-media op-eds and on owned and social media. I previously built and edited the opinion section at Fortune.
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Once in a while, an op-ed is written that has a major impact on a major national story. This is what happened with George Clooney’s July 10 piece in the New York Times.
I’m always banging on about how the success of an op-ed depends on the quality of the idea, not your relationship with the publication or the writer's credentials. But this situation is different, both because of Clooney’s clout in Hollywood and Washington—in particular his closeness to the Biden campaign—and because it came at such a critical moment in internal Democratic deliberations over Biden’s continued candidacy.
In cases like this, the messenger—and their decision to write the piece—are essential to the piece.
The guest essay editors at the New York Times knew this, and that’s why they published an article with such a basic premise: that Joe Biden should end his 2024 presidential campaign.
That said, while the circumstances may have made the Times editors more willing to accept a piece like this, the circumstances certainly didn’t guarantee that this article would ultimately be published. It still needed to have a clear message and evoke a strong emotional response from readers.
George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.
This headline is written in a style that's become popular in recent years: "I’m X, and here's how I feel about Y."
This format has been popularized by outlets like Business Insider, where headlines are often written in long, sentence-case formats. Digital articles can be more flexible with how much space they take up. And addressing readers so directly is effective in getting them to click without resorting to clickbait.
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Another point on the headline: Opening with "I love Joe Biden" was smart, as it communicates clearly to the reader how much of a supporter Clooney already is. This is a striking contrast with the argument he’s ultimately going to make.
I’m a lifelong Democrat; I make no apologies for that. I’m proud of what my party represents and what it stands for. As part of my participation in the democratic process and in support of my chosen candidate, I have led some of the biggest fund-raisers in my party’s history. Barack Obama in 2012. Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden in 2020. Last month I co-hosted the single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election. I say all of this only to express how much I believe in this process and how profound I think this moment is.
I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.
But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.
In this article, Clooney never explicitly states that Biden should no longer be the Democratic nominee.
Yes, it’s in the headline. However, news outlets often test out different headlines for their articles. Plus articles like these might be syndicated and appear in another outlet with a different headline. For that reason, it’s important that the core argument be stated in the text of the article itself.
Clooney could have written this at the end of the third paragraph above. Then, he could have transitioned into addressing explanations from the Biden team.
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It might look indulgent for Clooney to take up so much space establishing his Democratic credentials. But it’s integral to his whole argument, so it’s warranted.
One of the main questions an editor asks themselves when evaluating a pitch is, “Why you?” In this case, any major celebrity wouldn’t have qualified. It had to be someone as tied into the Democratic Party as Clooney is.
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The final “but” paragraph is powerful. Even though we already know it’s coming, the speed and force with which Clooney shifts is a little shocking. This is good! Sometimes a quick shift can feel abrupt and out of place. But in an op-ed of this magnitude, it works, because it parallels the urgency many Democrats were feeling at that moment.
It also sets the tone for the rest of the piece. Despite Clooney’s affection for Biden, he isn’t going to pull any punches.
Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.
Is it fair to point these things out? It has to be. This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.
I like these two paragraphs a lot because they’re direct and honest. We aren’t left with any doubt about what Clooney believes. One of the biggest frustrations a writer can dump on an editor is an op-ed that hems and haws.
My favorite line is: “But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.” Here Clooney gives voice to how so many Democrats felt at that time: gaslit.
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He continues to write from an “us” point-of-view, with statements like “we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign” and “we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president.”
Clooney is acting as a medium for Democrats’ thoughts and emotions. This is a really effective rhetorical technique. Readers like to read authors that say out loud what they’re thinking privately (or only expressing to confidants).
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Clooney continues to be unequivocal in the second paragraph. He doesn’t say that he thinks Democrats won’t win the White House and Congress; he says they won’t.
It’s reassuring to read someone who has such confidence. Yes, it’s bold to make a statement like that without hard evidence. But op-eds are supposed to be bold!
We love to talk about how the Republican Party has ceded all power, and all of the traits that made it so formidable with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to a single person who seeks to hold on to the presidency, and yet most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks. But the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.
Clooney needles his fellow Democrats here for acting like Republicans in their worship of Trump. This is a risky maneuver. But given the emergency vibe of that moment, it works. In Clooney’s mind, Democrats need to be shaken out of their stupor with some real talk.
It is disingenuous, at best, to argue that Democrats have already spoken with their vote and therefore the nomination is settled and done, when we just received new and upsetting information. We all think Republicans should abandon their nominee now that he’s been convicted of 34 felonies. That’s new and upsetting information as well. Top Democrats — Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi — and senators, representatives and other candidates who face losing in November need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside.
It’s important that Clooney addresses one of the arguments being made at the time against replacing Biden: that he had already won an overwhelming majority of primary delegates. Clooney says that because Democrats received “new and upsetting information,” it was legitimate to rethink the situation.
A good point! It not only addresses the other side of the argument, but also strengthens Clooney’s by reminding readers of how poor Biden’s debate performance was.
All of the scary stories that we’re being told about what would happen next are simply not true. In all likelihood, the money in the Biden-Harris coffers could go to help elect the presidential ticket and other Democrats. The new nominee wouldn’t be left off ballots in Ohio. We Democrats have a very exciting bench. We don’t anoint leaders or fall sway to a cult of personality; we vote for a president. We can easily foresee a group of several strong Democrats stepping forward to stand and tell us why they’re best qualified to lead this country and take on some of the deeply concerning trends we’re seeing from the revenge tour that Donald Trump calls a presidential campaign.
Let’s hear from Wes Moore and Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear and J.B. Pritzker and others. Let’s agree that the candidates not attack one another but, in the short time we have, focus on what will make this country soar. Then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out.
Would it be messy? Yes. Democracy is messy. But would it enliven our party and wake up voters who, long before the June debate, had already checked out? It sure would. The short ramp to Election Day would be a benefit for us, not a danger. It would give us the chance to showcase the future without so much opposition research and negative campaigning that comes with these ridiculously long and expensive election seasons. This can be an exciting time for democracy, as we’ve just seen with the 200 or so French candidates who stepped aside and put their personal ambitions on hold to save their democracy from the far right.
Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.
Clooney does something here that many op-eds fail to do: paint us a clear picture of a solution.
He doesn’t just urge Democrats to “replace Biden.” He gives them a plan for doing so. He calls on the party to have an open convention where rising stars can make their case.
Sure, he could be a bit more detailed in what that process would actually look like, given that it would have been unprecedented for a modern presidential election. But Clooney is not an expert in the Democratic Party machinery, so I doubt readers would be looking for that kind of analysis.
Clooney’s objective was to use his celebrity to try to force a change in thinking among Democrats. It’s hard not to conclude that he succeeded.