Discovering why the 2020 election turned out as it did will, given the complexities of American politics, take considerable time. Discovering how Trump lost and how Biden won will take longer. This article presents an initial foray in the latter direction by subjecting the rhetoric of the campaign to computerized language analysis via the DICTION program. In doing so, this study is the most recent outgrowth of the Campaign Mapping Project, begun at the University of Texas in Austin in 1995 and designed to produce comparative rhetorical data about presidential campaigns from 1948 to the present. The argument being made here is that Donald Trump lost the election by making excessive use of what Richard Hofstadter calls the Paranoid Style. In addition, Trump made exaggerated claims about abstract and unprovable conspiracies, all of which seemed derivative to voters worried about their health and their jobs in 2020. Joe Biden, in contrast, stressed Commonality—the need for shared purpose during a dangerous and dispiriting time. Biden also spoke directly of and to the people, thereby taking a page out of Trump’s own 2016 playbook. In many ways, Donald Trump’s self-preoccupations made him blind to the needs of the electorate, a habit that developed over the course of his presidency and that ultimately cost him his job.

考虑到美国政治的复杂性，要​​弄清为什么2020年大选能如愿以偿，将需要相当长的时间。发现方式特朗普输了，拜登如何获胜将需要更长的时间。本文通过使用DICTION程序对竞选活动的言论进行了计算机语言分析，提出了在后一个方向的初步尝试。为此，这项研究是竞选地图项目的最新成果，该项目于1995年在德克萨斯州奥斯汀的德克萨斯大学开始，旨在产生有关1948年至今总统竞选的比较修辞资料。这里的论点是唐纳德·特朗普因过度使用理查德·霍夫施塔特所说的偏执狂风格而失去了选举。此外，特朗普对抽象和无法证实的阴谋做出了夸大的说法，对于担心其健康和2020年工作的选民来说，所有这些似乎都是派生的。相比之下，乔·拜登（Joe Biden）强调共同性-在危险而令人沮丧的时期需要共同的目标。拜登还直接与人民交谈并与之交谈，从而从特朗普自己的2016年剧本中摘抄了一页。在许多方面，唐纳德·特朗普的自我专注使他对选民的需求视而不见，这种习惯在他担任总统期间就逐渐形成，并最终使他丧命。