Letters to the Editor
Gwool
Published Letters: 366 Editor's Choice: 40
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Beatability
[Read the article: Journalistic balance vs. truth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]CocktailHag wrote: "If nothing else, Obama has the benefit of being NEW! which always seems to be a dandy quality for a product, and in the end that is what candidates are today in the unfortunate place where we find ourselves.
Is he really more beatable than Hillary?
Or are they so confident, even now, that their racist followers will put them over the top?"
Good consultant that I am, I am going to say, "It depends."
Political strategists often look more at negative ratings than anything else when trying to decide whom to support. The simple supposition is one of a two step objection process. First you have to get them to neutral, then get them to yes. Much easier to start with an unknown and get the jump on defining them in a positive light before opponents begin paying attention and start negatively defining them. Huckabee is going through that now.
Hillary is known. Warts and all. Some love her. Some hate her. Few are ambivalent.
Her negatives are also in the 40s at moment, which should alarm the hell out of democrats.
If she gets the nod, she will likely deploy a strategy very much like Rove used for Bush. The classic strategy often attributed to Nixon and played by Clinton was the old drive to sew up the nomination and then race to the center to appeal to moderates less affiliated with one party and therefore less likely to vote in primaries.
Rove thumbed his nose at that premise arguing with some merit the nation these days is highly polarized. His goal was to energize both extremes and hopefully find ways to depress voter turnout which is anathema to a politcal junkie like myself. You energize your extreme with some raw meat issues like Gay Marriage (which Carville warned democrats about) and then throw a bone or two to the other side to hopefully temper there dislike for your boy and stay home. Being for immigration was targeted to mollify the hispanic bloc, for example.
Now and again sea change elections come about. 74 post watergate was one. 1994 was another. In those climates the public wants a new face. They want the status quo holders out.
If this is a sea change election, then Hillary's a goner. The only other viable candidate with Washington experience is McCain, viewed rightly or wrongly as a Maverick.
Obama resonates because he is NOT nasty. Hillary's dip came when she fired all her guns at once over slights. It seems all she knows. Obama argues the baby boomer generation of which I am on the tail end, has been having a national argument for 40 years and people are tired of it. From vietnam to family values we've been at each others throats for years. We need to shut up and take the early retirement package.
I do not know, but I sense her dip will be more permanent. I say this because I sense the nation looks around and thinks the Clinton years were much better than the Bush years, so she gets the as initial support in our desire for change. Through glasses tinted rose from selective memory loss about the Clinton history, we focused on the positives.
But then this sniping started and we collectively remembered all the bullshit we were happy to see recede from the national stage. We still want change, but Jesus we are tired of the sniping.
I think that is what Rove etal are referencing. I think there's too much suspicion of it being a calculated plot. I think their reactions are those of political junkies fascinated by the process and with sufficient reputations to be able to bloviate on the subject matter to larger audiences than faceless dweebs on a blog.
Carville was dead on when he cautioned about Gay Marriage being a wedge issue. I do not for one minute think he was arguing about the potential damage the issue would do to democrats in hopes Republicans would run with it and have it backfire on them.
There's been several visceral reactions to Hillary counterattacks. It *is* likely an overreaction based on past history. We're quick to jump on it just as others are quick to jump on the notion of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Obama's new and speaks of optimism without then coming off as whining as being unfairly picked on. Huckabee does this too. The dust up over his christmas/jesus/cross image ad could have been handled by him as complaining of christian bashing, secularists, or liberal elites. Instead he sloughed it off.
This is why those two have surged a little. They're likeable. We really do not, I think, want another mud bath.
That's Hillary's biggest problem. The rapid response made famous by Carville in 92 is something of which the nation has tired. Right or wrong, she gets assigned the blame.
Have Obama or Huckabee or even maybe McCain in the general and there will be a surge of new voter registrations. Have Hillary and Guliani in the general and it will be a Rovian battle to divide and conquer and depress voter turnout.
I'd like to see a campaign built on attracting, rather than deterring participation.
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The Southern Strategy is Very Much Alive
[Read the article: Journalistic balance vs. truth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Southern Strategy is very much alive. You could do a state analysis now, and you would find there to be about 7 or 8 states in play, which is a couple more than have been in play in the past.
Pundits speculated Clinton needed someone from an industrial state as his running mate in 1992. He was from a backwater southern state and he needed someone more urban (but certainly not more urbane.)
Instead he chose Gore in Tennessee, essentially doubling down on the south in hopes of breaking the Repulican firewall, and he succeeded with it.
It's more a southern/heartland strategy against a coastal strategy, but it is very much alive and well. Democrats did well the last time around by selecting more moderate candidates such as Webb in Virginia.