I'm kind of fascinated by the strategy of politics--by the way that Hillary seems to be ostentatiously trying not to be seen campaigning in the states she is going to lose, because the campaign would rather have the media reporting that she's conceded a given state, than hand Obama another "surprise" victory.
But deep down there's something wrong with all this. One can debate whether many things are permissible, or even vital, to democracy, even down to massive campaign contributions and backroom deals with politicians. But I think we can all agree that elections should not depend on your skill at manipulating the media, or garnering the support of the local activists with the best logistical skills at organizing things like election-day carpools.
Or voter intimidation in the caucuses.
Megan, this strikes me as somewhat surprisingly naive on your part. Winning elections has depended on manipulating the media since there was a media. All human communication involves manipulation. Democracy, or any form of government, for that matter, is irretrievably intertwined with manipulating human beings. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, and what you are referring to is cheesy manipulation which fundamentally does not respect the intelligence of the receiver of the message, in which case, I would agree that it is unfortunate that Senator Clinton's campaign holds the electorate in such contempt. I'll note once more that a Clinton/McCain race is certain to break all records for the the degree to which both major candidates fundamentally despise the people whose votes they are seeking, and no, that doesn't mean I'm an Obama groupie.
You write:
elections should not depend on your skill at manipulating the media
That's a useful "soft power" international skill, so demonstrating it domestically may reasonably be regarded as a plus (inasmuch as the skill may be transferable).
"I'm kind of fascinated by the strategy of politics--by the way that Hillary seems to be ostentatiously trying not to be seen campaigning in the states she is going to lose, because the campaign would rather have the media reporting that she's conceded a given state, than hand Obama another 'surprise' victory."
Isn't this the brilliant strategy recently used by Rudy Giuliani? ("If I concede all the earlier states, my lead in Florida and the Northeast will hold out!")
I agree that elections shouldn't ultimately depend on those things--if you get more votes than your opponent you should win--but I'm pretty ok with them having a substantial proximate effect. After all, a lot of the business of government is a) getting people with good logistical skills to deploy them on your behalf and b) using the media as a way to persuade the electorate about the wisdom of your ideas.
I disagree. First of all, with a free press, there's only so much manipulation you can do. With 24 hour news channels you have news about the news. Second of all its all about getting your ideas out and convincing people that those ideas are good... or at least not bad. This is the essence of democracy.
Now if you said "elections shouldn't be about killing or terrorizing your opposition" (Kenya, East Timor, Iraq, etc...) then I would agree with you.
I agree with Megan, the candidate who can frame more issues in moralistic terms, should win the election.
Actually, I disagree. Campaigns are a test of the managerial skills of a candidate as much as anything else. A presidential campaign is a very risky, very difficult, very high-pressure exercise, and the managerial skills needed to execute it, down to the details of organization on the ground, are very much a requirement of the presidency. So, yeah, should elections be decided by your skill at manipulating the media? Maybe not. But should they be decided by your skill at, say, speechmaking?
I think that one of the strengths of the Obama campaign is that we're not constantly hearing about its internal workings. Also, Obama is very even keeled. He doesn't freak out in public. He's under enormous stress, but we don't hear about it. He's been the underdog for this entire campaign. I think that's a good quality in a President. He's displaying a lot more nerve than Hillary Clinton (crying in public? what the hell?)
We don't hear about his campaign staff and there are few leaks. We hear about the candidate. The drama is the goal of the campaign, not the campaign itself. Contrast this with any Clinton operation.
I think that people are fairly innoculated to the same old Clinton tricks after 16 years. Hillary's public emoting is far less effective than her husband's. The media is not cooperating, either. All three networks cut off her speech tonight when it was clear that she was just using it for free air time.
Things don't magically go right for an undertaking as vast as a campaign for President. Obama isn't winning by luck. He and his campaign are doing a good job.
What's wrong with campaigns being decided by infrastructure? Obama had dozens of field offices in the states he's won in the last week, and Clinton had one or none in most of them. In NH and MA, where she actually organized, she won. Her shocking decision to literally not set up a campaign in flyover country probably cost her the presidency. Is that really unfair in any way?
I agree with Megan -- but the blame lies not with Clinton, but with the lazy, incompetent media.
I agree with the many well thought out comments about the effectiveness as an organizer being indeed relevant. These comments remind me of Obama's cut down of Romney in response to Romney's claim that having no real world experience running a business Clinton and Obama wouldn't be fit to run the economy. Obama's response was to contrast how effectively he'd run his campaign compared to the poor return per dollar Romney was getting on his investment in his own campaign. I took that as more than just a snide remark but an appreciated reminder that Obama's leadership skills that are constantly being called "untested" have actually been incredibly attested to by his campaign. He's shown an incredible amount of wise judgment to get as far as he has.
But the primary complaint of Ms. McArdle's posting IS valid. There's something ludicrous about the way the media lets contests not count when someone losing in them declares him or herself just not interested in that contest. Tonight a Clinton surrogate claimed that amidst tonight's drubbing that the campaign "did what it wanted to do, which is pick up delegates." That's like saying after you get outscored in a baseball game that you did what you wanted to do which was score some runs. You got trounced.
Where this is problematic is that on Super Tuesday Obama and Clinton had states clearly projected for their respective columns. It was clear the day would be a push. Simply because Obama was audacious enough to make runs at California and Massachusetts, there was a great deal of emphasis on his being "upset" in those states. Clinton taking those states didn't represent upsets, it represented her staving off upsets. The day was a flat deadlock tie. The moral victory went to Obama for showing as the insurgent candidate he could outraise Hillary and campaign nationally against her enormous name recognition, and fight her to a standstill on the day that was her "firewall." But even given all of that, the day was still a tie. Obama couldn't break her strongholds and she didn't even bother trying to break his.
Now Obama runs the table ever since Super Tuesday and yet the media talks as though all Hillary needs to do is take Ohio and Texas and she's even again. As though since she's declared herself not trying in 10+ contests, they don't count. As though the fact that even if she takes Ohio and Texas she most certainly won't regain a delegate lead or be expected to cinch up any more of the smaller states than she's been getting doesn't matter. She's allowed to define for herself that only these two big states matter and the media simply accepts that narrative.
That's ridiculous. MSNBC crunched the numbers and says she needs to take something like 56% of all the rest of the delegates for the rest of primary season to overtake him. Given her financial disadvantages, the fact that she's already used up New York, Massachusetts, and Arkansas (her three most friendly states), and the fact that thusfar she's losing 2 of every three contests and trailing in the delegates by over 100----she's essentially lost all reasonable hope of winning this election on the basis of delegates selected by the people.
The story is that Clinton has fallen too far behind to be saved by Ohio, Texas, or Pennsylvania. Her fate is squarely in the hands of superdelegates. Unless she proves as shameless and dishonest as expected and tries to pull Florida and Michigan out of her sleeves.
Mrs. Clinton is the wife of the master at triangulation and spinning the media into reporting that a defeat was actually a victory.
The Virgina results showed something interesting: with women comprising 60% of the voters, Mrs. Clinton majority of this demographic was a healthy 9%. Among the 40% of the voters who are male, Mr. Obama's majority was a healthier 14%. So, Obama over Clinton, 56% to 54%.
Possibly what is happening: the more that Mrs. Clinton continues to run TV ads showing large and adoring applauding audiences composed solely of women, the more support Mr. Obama garners overall. A Clinton feminist strategy (60% of the voters are female) appears to be backfiring.
Shorter Megan: Let's pretend it's 1998.
Campaigns have a limited amount of money, have a limited amount of hours in day a candidate can work. It does make sense to maximize the delegates they can get for each hour of work.
Even so, I think this is a weakness for Sen Clinton. She appears that she wasn't prepared (via hubris or just bad planning) for a long, close race. It almost seems like she expected to win based on reputation, not actual performance. And I gotta say, a lot of voters dislike the appearance of half hearted effort and entitlement (unfairly, I should add, I cannot imagine Sen Clinton or her family and staff could be working harder...better yes, but not harder).
Ideally, races shouldn't depend on such things. But they sure do, and as far as I can see, they always have. There may actually be less shady stuff going on now than there used to be, actually.
If you run a big campaign, you're going to have a various people come up to you in the large population centers offering to deliver certain neighborhoods or voting groups. If you've hired people who've worked that territory before, they'll have some idea of who can really deliver, versus the ones who just looking for some funds.
How they do that, though, is sort of like making hot dogs. You might not really want to watch. Sending around vans to pick up grannies and take them to the polls is the benign least of it, and I agree with the comments above that this is, in its way, a test of organizational skill and planning.
It gets worse, of course. Walking around handing out green paper, while rather crude, is (or was) not unheard of. Absentee ballots are a favorite source of mischief, with helpful campaign workers even going so far as to mark down the votes for all those folks in the nursing homes who (as it turns out) filled out all the paperwork to request everything, and all with the same pen.
I agree that elections shouldn't depend on stuff in that category, although they most certainly have, all the way up to the Presidential level, to which I adduce Chicago, 1960.
I agree with MM. I'm not sure we have the same reasoning.
The President needs to be a Leader not a Manager. Leadership is not about good tactics.
We have had manager Presidents in WJC and GWB. There is something wrong with that style, it lowers the efforts of everyone who works for them. If the Prez is the manager, then his assistants are lower than managers.
And it means any real leader cannot participate.
I could literally destroy Megan's argument, right here and now, but will wait for a later blog entry to do so.
Paid Philosopher et al:
Good comments. MSNBC showed that even with the current super delegate count, Obama is ahead. When you tally only elected delegates, his lead is even stronger.
I buy the punditocracy's consensus that superdelegates, given the chance to decide the election, will not give it to Billary if she's behind in the popular vote and the state count and the elected delegate count.
To do so would usher in the self-immolation of the Democratic Party and guarantee a Republican victory.
I'm a big Obama supporter. I don't particularly trust McCain. I think Obama will crush him, frankly. This is an historical movement, not just a black candidate who gives good speeches.
Obama's campaign strategy has been masterful. Now, today, we'll hear a major policy speech on the economy. He's been pacing the campaign, building the big Mo, now going to put it to her and I believe he will take Texas, go very close in OH, same in PA, and win on delegates outright...super and elected delegates alike.
Hillary is now playing in the Obamaverse, she's drifting away from the mother ship (her inevitability), and her rocket pack is running out of fuel.
MM has it exactly backwards, media manipulation and activist motivation are great skills to have in a president. In order to pass his agenda a president has to be popular enough that the congress is afraid to oppose him. A president skilled at manipulating the media will be more popular than one who is not.
Another way of winning votes in congress is to get citizens who are active in politics to lobby their representatives on the president's behalf. A candidate who can get people to carpool to the polls will likely be one who can get people to call their congressman.
Skill at media manipulation and the ability to organize activists should be valued more highly in a candidate than giving vapid speeches or zinging your opponent in a debate.