While I’m on the subject, SKBubba turned me on to this article in the Atlantic about the sophisticated new methods being used to find and understand these wacky swing voters. There is much of interest in the article, but I was particularly struck by this:
The New Democrat Network, a centrist political organization, was among the first in this election cycle to use polling to sketch out a profile of the latest generation of swing voters. Data shared with each of the Democratic candidates (and provided to The Atlantic) describes them as mainly white and also younger, less likely to vote, and more likely than self-identified Democrats or Republicans to characterize themselves as “workaholics.” They are most heavily concentrated in suburbs and small cities, and though they disapprove of many Bush Administration policies, they tend to be more religious and to admire military service more than most Democrats do. “On many issues their attitudes correspond strongly with the Democratic Party even though demographically they are closer to Republican voters,” says Peter Brodnitz, of the firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, which conducted the poll.
The New Democrat Network identified civil liberties and the environment as the two issues on which independents and Republicans most strongly disagree—and, indeed, many of the Democratic candidates have sounded precisely these themes. (Buried in the report’s “tactical recommendations” is information that both sides in the next campaign may find useful: independents listen to a disproportionate amount of country radio, and they watch SportsCenter more often than other Americans—a taste, the poll reveals, that corresponds more closely with Democrats’ than Republicans’.)
Other organizations, including Emily’s List, have conducted broader studies to sort independents into smaller “lifestyle clusters,” the better to target them in the fall. Emily’s List has identified four basic groups: disengaged “Bystanders,” who when motivated to vote lean Democratic; “Senior Health Care” voters, whose gender (predominantly female) suggests an inclination to support Democrats; “Education First” voters, 64 percent female and 66 percent pro-choice but currently more supportive of Bush and the Iraq War than the typical Democrat; and the “Young Economically Pressured,” many of whom work more than forty hours a week and may care for an elderly parent. Though this last group tends to support the Democratic position on funding public schools and other issues, its members live predominantly in small towns or rural areas and are culturally conservative.
The challenge for the next Democratic candidate will be reaching all these independents, many of whom live in small cities and suburbs that are gradually abandoning the Democratic Party. The suburban vote, which Bush won narrowly in 2000, continues to grow. Suburban women already tend to vote Democratic, so the nominee must make a special effort to appeal to men, whose vote fluctuates more than women’s in presidential elections and who have lately deserted the party in large numbers: men now prefer Republicans over Democrats by 19 percentage points.
Read the whole article. It’s got a lot of food for thought.
Nick Confessore at TAPPED discusses the “bringing in new voters” meme and highlights some interesting information from an article (subscriber only) by John Harwood in today’s Wall Street Journal.
Granted, Dean laid out his swing voter strategy in the article I linked in my earlier post, but according to this article he is also saying in Iowa this week:
“We can’t beat George Bush with the same people who voted in 2000.The only way we can beat George Bush is by attracting people who have given up on politics.”
Now, I don’t have any beef with Dean saying this. It’s a big part of his appeal and his strategy. But, I confess that I’m always skeptical of any politicians ability to deliver on the claim because I went through those years in the 70’s and 80’s when Democrats often said it and it never turned out to be true. (In fact, just last fall, everyone including the candidate himself said that Schwarzenegger was going to pull a Jesse Ventura and bring in a bunch of new voters and that didn’t turn out to be true either. He won with an average turn-out of the usual suspects including the support of 20% self-professed liberal Democrats.)
However, that does not mean it isn’t true this time, so I’m keeping an open mind. As always, I’d like to believe it because … well, I’m a loyal Democrat and I’d genuinely like to see an influx of voters who have been turned off by politics in the past. Confessore doesn’t seem to think it’s likely and I have to admit that this excerpt from the WSJ piece doesn’t soothe my worries about this strategy:
There’s no doubt that rousing new enthusiasm in the country as a whole will prove more difficult for Mr. Dean than it has been in the nomination contest. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows greater Democratic sympathies for Mr. Dean among those who aren’t registered to vote than among those who are. But among all unregistered voters, there isn’t a greater propensity to vote for Mr. Dean — either in the Democratic race or in the general election.
In fact, those not registered are slightly more supportive of the Iraq war than Americans as a whole. So are younger voters, whom Mr. Dean has been counting on but who have rarely turned out in large numbers. An exception was Mr. Ventura’s third-party win. So far, “Dean is no Jesse Ventura” when it comes to drawing young voters, observes Robert Teeter, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with his Democratic counterpart Peter Hart.
Confessore adds:
Let’s recap. Democrats not registered to vote are slightly more pro-Dean, but the non-voting masses are not — in part, it would seem, because they are actually more pro-war than registered voters. So that doesn’t exactly net out to Dean’s benefit. And although you see a lot of media coverage about Dean’s capacity to excite young voters, that group isn’t exactly coming out in droves for the guy — again, probably in part because they are relatively pro-war.
If anyone tries to claim, as the Wall Street Journal does today, that Wes Clark and Richard Perle were in agreement during their testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on September 26, 2002, just point them to this statement:
PERLE: “So I think General Clark simply doesn’t want to see us use military force and he has thrown out as many reasons as he can develop to that but the bottom line is he just doesn’t want to take action. He wants to wait.”
Update: The above comment is from the very same transcript.
I know I’m going to get royally flamed for posting this, and I’m sure I’ll regret ever thinking of it, but I was waiting for it to get circulated and it never did, so I guess it’s up to me.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean is leading in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, but a demographic portrait of the voters he’s drawing nationwide shows he’ll face major challenges when the opening contests are over and the Democratic field narrows.
An analysis of the Democratic electorate indicates that Dean’s major rivals are likely to be in a better position than he is to appeal to voters whose candidates drop out of the race.
And many of the contests next on the calendar are in states dominated by the sort of voters Dean has had relatively little success drawing, at least so far.
USA TODAY combined responses from 3,238 Democrats surveyed in the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll since September, when retired general Wesley Clark got in the race. They were sorted into the 14 demographic groups devised by the marketing firm Claritas, which uses Census data to characterize Americans.
The contrast between Dean and Clark, who lead the field, is stark:
Dean’s support is disproportionately drawn from affluent, college-educated voters who live in big cities and their suburbs. His largest single group of supporters is called “Urban Uptown.”
He is weakest in a group called “Rustic Living,” a mix of young and old people who live in rural areas and small towns.
Clark’s support is the most balanced among the six major contenders, generally tracking the distribution of Democratic voters among cities, suburbs and rural areas. He draws strong support from a group called “Second City Society,” affluent, college-educated voters who live in medium-size cities. His single largest group of supporters is in “Rustic Living.”
The “Rustic Living” group looms large in the Democratic contests. It makes up the biggest bloc of Democratic voters, comprising one in 10 U.S. households but one in six Democrats. It is the greatest single source of support for Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
This is the first I’ve seen of any serious demographic analysis of the various candidates’ support. I’ve not seen the underlying data but assuming it is basically correct it validates the questions many of us have with Dean’s “turn out the base” strategy, since he doesn’t seem to be clicking quite yet even with Democrats outside of big cities. Maybe these “Rustic Living” Democrats who make up six in ten members of the party will vote ABB no matter what, but I don’t think that’s clear. More importantly, it’s not a very good way to deal with the electoral college challenge. Big turn out in blue state big cities simply isn’t going to get it done.
Though Dean did not enter the race with the expectations of winning, he did see a way to win. “Karl Rove [President Bush’s political guru] discovered it, too, but I discovered it independently,” Dean says and adds that the theory is embodied in the writings of George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley. “What you do is crank the heck out of your base, get them really excited and crank up the base turnout and you’ll win the middle-of-the-roaders,” Dean says. The reason, according to the theory, is that swing voters share the characteristics of both parties and eventually go with whatever party excites them the most. “Democrats appeal to them on their softer side–the safety net–but the Republicans appeal to them on the harder side–the discipline, the responsibility, and so forth,” Dean says. “So the question is which side appears to be energetic, deeply believing in its message, deeply committed to bringing a vision of hope to America. That side is the side that gets the swing voters and wins.”
I have expressed my doubts about the usefulness of Lakoff’s framing of the two parties for any kind of electoral strategy or message. It is simply a descriptive frame, and I think Dean aptly uses it here. However, I have absolutely no idea, and frankly neither does he, if this theory about swing voters is true. Certainly, it has not been true in the past.
In 1992, the Republican convention showcased a party of energy, one that deeply believed in its message and portrayed a strong vision of hope for America. Pat Buchanan made a case for taking the country back from the moral relativists who were ruining the country. It was much too strident and ended up sending swing voters running. I am not comparing Buchanan to Dean, so save your fury for someone else. I am merely pointing out that there is some evidence that Dean’s theory, at least sometimes, does not work.
Indeed, contrary to what Dean asserts in his comment, after the overt partisanship of that convention and the divisive leadership of Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove went in the opposite direction and ran George W. Bush as if he were a card carrying member of the NAACP and the ACLU. Apparently, they thought that being too “deeply believing in its message” was turning off voters. (Of course, he lost by half a million votes, so perhaps that theory doesn’t work either.)
So, maybe it is the message that counts with swing voters, after all. Or perhaps it’s a matter of cultural affinity or a “good feeling” for the candidate. I’m not sure anyone really knows what moves swing voters. Whatever the case, Dean’s theory cannnot be tested if he cannot stir the base beyond the big cities. The next two months will tell that tale.
I know that I will get some comments about Dean’s bringing in new voters and his organizational prowess. I am not dismissing that. However, as with the demographic data I referenced above, I have been waiting to see whether Dean is, in fact, bringing in new voters and whether his organization is, in fact, powerful. I’ve only heard campaign boasts and anecdotal evidence from his supporters that this is true. The press repeats it as if it were gospel, but I haven’t seen any actual evidence from them either. The proof is in the pudding and I presume that actual real life voters will confirm whether his campaign has broken new ground beyond its obvious success with fundraising and internet communication.
I hope that it has because gawd knows we Democrats need all the help we can get.
Chris Suellentrop gives a rather tortured defense of his incomprehensible screed from the other day to which I won’t even bother to respond in detail.
I do take issue with his characterization of both Clark and Dean engaging in “bad politics” by making what he calls “impolitic” statements. Clearly, what Suellentrop knows about politics, bad or otherwise, could fit on the head of a pin.
Yes, both men have made impolitic statements, as have Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt and even(Gawd help me) George W. Bush. I would bet that every single candidate for office in the history of the world has made “impolitic” statements, and many of them won because of them. They give several speeches every single day and answer huge numbers of questions which are then poured over by smug, superior reporters who search for small niggling inconsistencies with which to Gore them. Fine. We all know that.
Suellentrop, from his perch atop Mt Olympus also apparently believes that each of the candidates are perceived in exactly the same way by the voters (as clowns, evidently, since that is how he sees them) so when they make these “impolitic” statements they are also received by the public in exactly the same way. This is ridiculous.
It is bad politics for Wesley Clark to make an “impolitic” statement about abortion because it reinforces the perception that he doesn’t know anything about women’s issues or the minefield of abortion politics in America. In the Democratic Party that is a BIG mistake. That comment plays to his weakness and is therefore, bad politics. On the other hand, when he makes an “impolitic” statement about national security it reinforces the idea that he is prepared to take on the conventional wisdom about George W. Bush on national defense. That plays to his strength.
When Howard Dean makes an “impolitic” statement about national security it reinforces the perception that he is inexperienced in an area that makes him vulnerable to George W. Bush. This is a big issue for Democrats. That comment plays to his weakness. On the other hand, when he makes an “impolitic” statement about his supporters being unwilling to back another candidate it reinforces his independence from the Democratic power structure. It plays to his strength.
These alleged impolitic statements aren’t made in a vaccuum. The candidates are a package of image, talents, experience, strengths and personality. The fact that they each may be making similar claims that sound “impolitic” to the ears of Chris Suellentrop does not mean that any of the the claims are wrong or that it is equally bad politics for all candidates to say them.
Frankly, I’m not really sure that journalists such as Suellentrop are in a position to guage what bad politics are in the first place. To completely butcher a great quote by Rebecca West, they seem to believe that Democrats practice bad politics whenever “they express sentiments that differentiate them from a doormat.”
Via TAPPED, I find that the Columbia Journalism Review has started a blog of sorts called “Campaign Desk” to try to fact check some of the lies and misinformation that get into the bloodstream of the body politic during the campaign.
One of the minor rituals of American presidential politics is the post-election self-examination (or perhaps I should say self-flagellation) by the press. Quadrennially, we regret having pursued some lines of inquiry while ignoring others, or having gotten caught up in momentary feeding frenzies over unimportant things, or having been too susceptible to spin — and then we resolve to do a better job next time. But now we have a new tool. In 2004, the Web makes it possible to analyze and criticize press coverage in real time, so that suggestions for improved coverage might actually be heeded, and incorporated into campaign coverage, while the campaign is still under way.
Thanks to generous funding from foundations — mainly the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Revson Foundation, and the Open Society Institute — we have set up a campaign press criticism “war room” here at the Journalism School, with the beginnings of a full-time professional staff of seven that will monitor as much of the campaign coverage as possible, and write about it here. The managing editor of CampaignDesk.org, Steve Lovelady, is already on board, and he and Mike Hoyt, the editor of CJR, are well into the hiring process. Steve is a veteran journalist who earlier served as a deputy page-one editor at the Wall Street Journal; then, as part of Gene Roberts’s dream team at the Philadelphia Inquirer, helped supervise eleven Pulitzer Prize-winning works of journalism over twenty years; and, more recently, was an editor-at-large at Time Inc. Bryan Keefer, assistant managing editor, was one of the co-founders of the website Spinsanity.org. CampaignDesk.org will be updating the site several times daily, with particular emphasis on speed when the staff feels it can get inside the news cycle and try to improve coverage as it’s being formed.
They are already doing a fine job in my estimation. They’ve taken on the lazy lurid non-story of yesterday about Dean’s “trooper” beating his wife and have debunked today’s breathless Drudge exclusive in which he butchers Wes Clarks testimony before the televised House Armed Services Committee on Iraq.
The hope, I think, is that journalists will turn to this site to get information on the latest spin and misinformation so that they will not be reporting it blind. I have my doubts as to whether many of them give a damn, but there must be at least a few who didn’t become reporters purely for the social acceptance of their peers.
Likewise, might I hope that people do not spam this site with abusive e-mails when it doesn’t conform to their point of view? It seems like one place where we should try to make reasoned arguments and present evidence rather than vent our spleen. They might actually have an effect on the way the campaign is covered if it works and it would be helpful if it could be a flame-free zone.
Kleiman, Drum and Marshall have all weighed in on this strange column by Chris Suellentrop in Slate. According to Suellentrop he was making an ironic statement about how Fox news would treat Clark if they treated him the same way they treat Dean. Or something.
It seems that his technique needs some work because huge numbers of people wrote in to ask him what the hell he was talking about, since the headlines bear no relationship to what Clark actually said and his article is not written in such a way that anyone would assume that he is being ironic.
Sadly, his delightful little piece has made the rounds of the wing-nuts, who are irony impaired at the best of times, and they have now taken Suellentrop’s unamusing drivel as gospel. Kleiman points out in his post that Andrew Sullivan gleefully took the bait, but there are more. *sigh*
I have not complained about campaign tactics and wrung my hands about the unfairness of attacks and you won’t see me doing that in the primary. (I reserve my right to whine profusely in the general election.) However, I am going to complain about the press’ treatment of Clark all I want. I expect that the other candidates’ supporters will do the same for them.
For whatever reason, Suellentop decided to write an opaque little piece that was easily misinterpreted about Wesley Clark and which he clearly stated later was written in tongue in cheek fashion to show that Howard Dean has been getting unfair coverage. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. If I were a paranoid type I might even think that it’s downright biased.
It’s certainly fair for Suellentrop to write a piece about the unfair coverage he feels that Dean is getting, but it doesn’t quite add up to me that in order to do that he had to write a false and misleading “humor” piece about Clark that is now being widely circulated and is feeding a meme that will undoubtedly serve Dean, not by showing that he’s gotten unfair press coverage (perfectly legitimate complaint) but by circulating nasty innuendo about his rival. That is the sort of thing I expect from campaigns, not from journalists.
Here’s just a little taste of the fallout from Suellentrop’s ironic pratfall:
(Links not included. If you want to read the full-on wing nut reaction you can google it.)
Wes Clark – Foot in Mouth Disease From: Go Dubya! Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:45:50 CST
Slate.com has a great collection of Wesley Clark’s ridiculous statements from the New Hampshire campaign trail. My favorite is: Young men in an Islamic culture cannot get married until they can support a family. No job, no marriage. No marriage,…
Wes Clark’s Big Mouth From: Deinonychus antirrhopus Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:36:25 CST
Looks like Gen. Wesley Clark also has a tendency to open his mouth and insert foot. Does Islam need an…
Foot Planted Firmly In Mouth From: Internet Ronin Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:51:41 CST
Wesley Clark has been saying some very interesting things in recent days. Chris Suellentrop has a round-up of the retired…
CHRIS SUELLENTROP writes in Slate that Wesley Clar From: Instapundit.com Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:00:43 CST
CHRIS SUELLENTROP writes in Slate that Wesley Clark is saying some pretty odd things. The trouble with the Internet, where candidates are concerned, is that when they say odd things, word tends to get out. UPDATE: The Loonatic Left blog is defending…
WHOPPERS From: Pejmanesque Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:07:51 CST
Chris Suellentrop has the goods on some pretty outrageous statements by Wesley Clark. For all the talk about Clark’s poise and command, he really is given to making some eye-rolling statements. Be sure to check out the article….
Five Items (1/13/04). From: Tasty Manatees Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:32:33 CST
1. “Wesley Clark’s Loose Lips”. Oh, my. Here are six unbelievable quotes from Wesley Clark that pretty much settle the point I made earlier, which is that Clark is seriously not ready for prime time. Funny, but none of these gems have been getting play.
I realize that there can no longer be any form of political discourse that cannot fit on a bumper sticker, but this is really getting ridiculous.
Mark Kleiman sets the record straight on this nonsense today about Clark’s “inconsistencies” on the subject of whether Iraq and al Qaeda were “linked.”
But there is even more.
Clark is also on record as a military expert testifying about this very subject before the House and Senate Armed Services Committess, in full context, saying exactly what he claims to have said and believed at the very same time.
There has been no inconsistency. He said then that Saddam had no substantial ties to al Qaeda and that there was no evidence that he had been involved in 9/11. He did, however, say that it would not be unusual if there were some low level links between them.
SAXTON (R-NJ): Mr. Perle, General Clark indicated a few minutes ago that he wasn’t sure — I’m sorry, I don’t want to mischaracterize what General Clark said but something to the effect that we don’t have information that Al Qaida and the Iraqi regime are connected. Is that a fair characterization, General Clark?
CLARK: I’m saying there hasn’t been any substantiation of the linkage of the Iraqi regime to the events of 9/11 or the fact that they are giving weapons of mass destruction capability to Al Qaida, yes sir.
SAXTON: OK, now that has been a widely held view, at least in some quarters, and I suspect that one of the difficulties that we’ve had in addressing this subject comes because of the difficulty of collecting intelligence in that region of the world for all the reasons that we know.
However, yesterday the president’s national security adviser began to talk about this subject in a different light. She said we clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and member of Al Qaida going back for a long time. We know too that several of the Al Qaida detainees, in particular some high-ranking detainees have said that Iraq provided some training to Al Qaida in chemical weapons development.
Now I suspect that it would be difficult for someone to say that if they didn’t have information to back it up and she also suggested that the details of the contacts would be released at a later to date and from my knowledge of intelligence work, which is sketchy, but from what I know it’s difficult sometimes to disclose details because you endanger sources.
And so, I think this is a subject that certainly there are beginning to be indications that there are — as a matter of fact, other bad guys have gone to Iraq. Abu Nidal died there recently, and when you couple all this with the notion that Saddam has been very determined to act out against his neighbors and the West and seems to stop at nothing, to draw the conclusion based on evidence that is beginning to emerge that there is no contact and no general theme of cooperation between Saddam and officials or the leadership of Al Qaida is a stretch, and I think a dangerous conclusion to come to. Richard Perle, would you give us your opinion?
PERLE: Yes, thank you, Mr. Saxton. I think you’ve identified an important issue and a serious problem. It is true that it is difficult to collect intelligence in these areas but the bigger problem in my view has been a stunning lack of competence among our own intelligence agencies. They’ve simply proved incompetent in this area and I’ve testified on this theme several times over the last ten or 15 years.
What we are now beginning to see is evidence that was there all along. It simply wasn’t properly assessed, and the reason why it wasn’t assessed in my view is that a point of view dominated the intelligence community, the CIA in particular and that point of view held that a secular Baathist regime like that of Saddam Hussein would not cooperate with religious fanatics like Al Qaida.
This was a theory. There was nothing to support it except the speculation of the intelligence officials who held that view, and as a result they simply didn’t look for evidence that there might be a connection. Now that we are aware of the strange ways in which terrorists cooperate all over the world, we’re beginning to find significant evidence.
There is no logical basis for the IRA cooperating with terrorists in Columbia and yet we’ve caught them red handed doing it. There’s a kind of professional trade craft involved in which people engaged in the business of terrorism work with one another for mutual convenience, sometimes for exchanges of money and the like.
So there is, in fact, evidence of relations between Saddam and Al Qaida and I believe that the more intensively we scrutinize databases of information available to us in the past, the more evidence of that we’re going to find.
CLARK: Representative Saxton, if I could just tag along on that. I think there’s no question that, even though we may not have the evidence as Richard says, that there have been such contacts. It’s normal. It’s natural. These are a lot of bad actors in the same region together. They are going to bump into each other. They are going to exchange information. They’re going to feel each other out and see whether there are opportunities to cooperate. That’s inevitable in this region, and I think it’s clear that regardless of whether or not such evidence is produced of these connections that Saddam Hussein is a threat.
So I think that, you know, the key issue is how we move from here and what do we need to do to deal with this threat? But I think what’s also clear is that the way you deal with the threat from Iraq is different than the way you deal with the threat from Al Qaida. And so, my contention has been we need to look at different means for dealing with these threats. We need to take advantage of all the resources at our disposal, not just the military.
If I could say with respect to the inspections issue, as well as the comments of my friend and colleague Richard Perle, I’m not either optimistic or pessimistic. I practiced weapons inspection. I’ve been involved in diplomacy at the United Nations, and I’ve been involved in setting up the plans for a number of post conflict situations, including Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo, so I’m only giving you the best judgment from my own perspective. I don’t label it. So, Richard, if I could just in a friendly way say if you won’t label me, I won’t label you.
You really need to read the whole transcript. You’ll be reminded just how certifiably insane Richard Perle and the GOP lackeys in congress were at the time. I think we’ve all blocked it from our memories. It was downright surreal.
Clark’s views are clear. He calls Saddam a threat, but not an imminent threat. He states that the most important thing is to get inspectors back into the country and gain the support of the international community. He rejects the notion of a preemption doctrine. He said that the use of force was to be used as diplomatic leverage, but thought that the president should be required to come back for final authority.
In both this and his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee at around the same time you see his unwillingness to jump on to what was becoming an unstoppable train. Senators, congressmen and Republican assholes of all stripes gave him tons of shit, but he kept right on saying what they didn’t want to hear.
It’s not quite as simple as “Let’s Kill The Bastards!” or “Hell No We Won’t Go” but it is the serious and thoughtful position of a man with a fine mind and years of experience who had great reservations about the way the administration was hurtling us into war. He deserves some credit for that. Indeed, one might even think that such complexity of thought would be a requirement in a president.
Jayzuz. Apparently, Kevin of Tooney Bin continues to get a ration of shit for posing a silly question to General Clark during our little wireside chat the other day. Frankly, I don’t know why he’s getting the brunt of it, because I did exactly the same thing he did, but was lucky enough to have a serious question posed as well as the light one.
We all submitted several questions. I submitted three, two of which were serious policy questions and one of which was a lighthearted personality type question about how many states he had lived in and which foreign countries he found most interesting. Kevin did the same thing. They used one of my serious questions (about electoral reform) and my silly one. In Kevin’s case they only used his silly one.
Here’s the deal. This was a chat with friendly or neutral political bloggers. It was not a Russertesque grilling situation. I am not unbiased nor do I pretend to be. I wanted to ask serious questions, but I also wanted to use my rather unique opportunity to help Clark’s candidacy if I got the chance.
People who read this blog know that I believe the electorate to be moved on an emotional basis as much as anything else. The vast majority of people vote because of party ID (even if they don’t know it.) But, those who don’t, and they are the ones who it’s necessary to win over, tend to vote based on their personal impression of the man. Therefore, I thought that asking a personal question might illuminate something of the man that such people might find appealing. In addition, supporters of a candidate are often interested in such little tid-bits of information and often turn them into rituals and iconic campaign symbols among the faithful. It’s a nice bonding thing.
I also wanted to bring up the fact that Clark had lived all over the United States in his years in the military, something I don’t think many people realize. It’s not a big thing, but it’s a detail that sets him apart and perhaps gives him a bit of a national cultural identification that people might like. I asked him which foreign country he liked the most because I also thought some of the sophisticates in the Party might be interested. I was extremely pleased with the answer because it was much more colorful and interesting than I expected.
Kevin’s question was posed for laughs and designed to change the pace. Quite a few people on the Clark blog thought it was fun, just as they think it’s fun that he’s a Cheetos freak. People like this stuff. It makes their guy human. Politics is more than policy papers and polls and strategy. A campaign is an audition of sorts and the person who wins must appeal to people on a number of levels. There is a reason why the late night talk shows and Oprah are part of campaigning nowdays. Personal appeal is a big part of why people vote.
Finally, bloggers and political internet “experts” need to get some perspective. We are one of the moving parts of the modern campaign and that’s terrific. But, we aren’t that big of a deal. It is highly doubtful that any of us asked a serious question that hasn’t been posed before by one of the hundreds of journalists following the candidate all over the place or the thousands of New Hamshirites he’s appeared before at town hall meetings.
In fact, it just may be that the salad dressing question is the only one, in which case it was a major scoop.