Media matters

Yesterday, half the status messages in my IM window were some variant on "Yes, we can!" Today, there's a fair amount of "Okay, so maybe we couldn't." But Obama's camp is claiming they lead in delegates now, heading into some very favorable states for his campaign. And after disappointing results in New Hampshire, it does seem as if Obama has definitively snapped back.

As I said to Matt last night, I think the result is going to ride heavily--too heavily--on how the media reports this. If Obama is cast as the Comeback Kid, he'll take it; if the media downplays his momentum, probably Hillary will. After California, the media commentators I saw seemed to be delivering a slightly pro-Clinton take on events. This morning, though, Obama seemed like he might be drawing even in the media battle.

Comments

The media is always a few steps behind the real story. In this case, they were busy trumpeting the California results before taking a look at the big picture to see that Obama had won the most delegates, which everyone agrees is what matters.

Posted by Mike | February 6, 2008 12:54 PM

It seems to me that the nightmare scenario for Democrats is a razor close race that Senator Clinton wins by way of superdelgates, and lobbying to have some delegates from Michigan and Florida seated. I think a lot of the punditry regarding the Democratic base becoming alienated from the the party's candidate by a divisive Clinton/Obama battle is overblown, but this is one way I could actually see it happending.

Posted by Will Allen | February 6, 2008 1:22 PM

Will,

I think there would be no problem if Clinton won by the superdelegate counts alone- those are rules, though silly they may be.

I think she has no option but to let the Florida and Michigan delegates go, however. To win via that route would be political suicide.

Posted by Yancey Ward | February 6, 2008 2:09 PM

Clinton can't afford to squeeze Obama out by superdelegates. Usually a Democrat insider can abuse the system like that, but this year is different because of whom she would be squeezing. Remember the Americans most jealous of their franchise and most essential to a Democratic victory are the African Americans.

Clinton can't win in November if she wins even as little as merely 80% of the African American votes.

Posted by Brian | February 7, 2008 12:26 AM

The superdelegates blow with the wind. If Obama looks like he's heading into the convention with a 200 delegate lead and solid majority support, they'll follow. The nightmare scenario is a 100 delegate lead, in which case the nominee is decided by the battle to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida--but in that case, the national party has a strong impetus to side with Obama because denying seating is the only stick they wield to control the primary scheduling. If they don't stand firm, then 2012 will have a 50 state primary on Iowa's day. I think ultimately the state party reps who will take part in deciding to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates will recognize that they lose in a compressed primary schedule and will back up the national party.

Anyway, I think Megan is overdetermining the role the media plays in this. Between wildly inaccurate polling and dueling narratives about who's the establishment candidate and who's the challenger, the media has been following, not leading, this story. Obama's support is real grassroots, and Hillary's is real establishment party machine--neither is depending upon the media narrative to carry them.

Posted by Justin JJ | February 7, 2008 2:13 AM

Good points made by all. I think the superdelegates become a very delicate issue in this election and Hillary has to be careful how she handles the situation.

Her team is banking on taking Texas and Ohio, but assuming those states'delagates are proportionately distributed, and that Obama can now devote fuller attention to any given state, it will be interesting to see how she deals with the slow slippage, and whether she gets more desperate in tactics or tone.

Funding issues and higher Chelsea usage are only the beginning of the cracks.

And how does that play with Obama up against a McCain whose party is swayed by a vocal minority of influencers who are obviously blind to where the electorate is heading. They basically force Romney to pretend to be more conservative, unwilling to comprehend that McCain might have been the perfect fairly conservative candidate to reach undecided and independent voters.

Now McCain will have to bow, bend and walk funny to appease a group (Limbaugh and associates) who have not a clue. Will he, or won't he.

And when McCain loses, all the ones knocking him now will draw entirely the wrong conclusions, and as though Romney could have won the whole deal if he could have somehow leapfrogged the primary process.

Posted by Finn | February 7, 2008 3:00 AM