Clarion Content

Been doing some thinking on the Democratic Party Nominee lately here at the editorial desk. Trying to understand the collective pysche of the Democratic party. Trying get a feel for which way the wind is blowing. The primaries, they are a coming. There is some controversy brewing as to whether Florida, New Hampshire, Michigan, or Iowa goes first. (Not to mention South Carolina and Nevada ostensibly going 3rd and 4th versus 5th and 6th.) The Democratic National committee is so mad about all of this finagleing that they have as of now voted to strip Florida of its delgates to the convention. (Florida Democrats are trying to decide whether to hold a no-delegate straw pool or sue, while the candidates are trying to remain above the fray.) All the while the days of the calendar are continuing to turn. The process is likely to be outrageously rapid once it commences.

In the seemingly recent past commentators have bemoaned first that the process ended before the conventions at all. In 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was shot, it was campaigning in a California primary that still mattered in June. The California primary hasn’t mattered in more than twenty years now. This year the presumptive nominee could be determined by the beginning of March. The process has been crunching itself into a smaller and smaller period every election cycle. All the while the cost of campaigning, most especially paying for television advertising have been increasing exponentially. In the last election commentators and talking heads were beoaning that the process was over in two and one half months. Well, like some kind of cyberpolitical Moore’s law, they are going to halve the speed again this election cycle. Once the first primary goes, where ever it goes, the nomination process will be over in weeks. The weeks in question are mere months away, so the Clarion has been wetting a finger and sticking it in the air trying to figure which way the proverbial winds are blowing.

Hillary has the solid lead, the clear front runner status and has for a while. She is leading in national polls, but not in the traditional first primary states, New Hampshire and Iowa. Obama has come from nowhere to be considered a legitamate contender. But for the Clarion smells wide early interest, packed around a significantly smaller hard core of true devotees. See Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, and Paul Tsongas. Possibly even a McGovern analogy might be applicable considering Obama’s utterly anti-war stance, and appeal to youth. (None of this by-the-by is to say squat about which one of these candidates the Clarion might endorse. It is only by way of speculative prediction about whom the Democratic Party might nominate that we offer these comments.) Another that underlines the possible softness of support for Obama is that it has been shown he polls much more favorably on the softer questions about who voters like and dislike, rather than the harder edged, more definitive questions, who they intend to vote for. Whereas Hillary’s numbers are relatively consistent across those two questions Obama’s tend to lose about 10 percentage points when potential voters are asked which candidates they have favorable impressions of as compared to which candidate they are likely to vote for. Obama wants voters to believe his candidacy is possible. The Clarion doesn’t think he has convinced them just yet.

Hillary’s biggest question for the Democratic Party comes on the electability front. She has far and away the highest negative poll numbers of any Democratic candidate. She is the only candidate that comes with a huge cadre of the electorate who already know they won’t vote her. She has far fewer undecideds than the other possible Democratic nominees. She has more certain yess votes than any other Democratic candidate, too. This is interrelated, but not exactly the same diagramatic as America having never nominated a female candidate for president from one of the major parties, let alone elected one. There are people who won’t vote for Hillary and people who won’t vote for a woman, but that are not one in the same demographic. The worry for Democrats is that there are significant numbers of both. The are people who normally don’t vote, who haven’t voted in ages who will turn out to vote for and against a serious female candidate for President of the United States.

One strain of the anti-Hillary virus is that as the wife of a former president, she represents dynastic continuity (ala Argentinian Peronism) of years twenty-one through twenty-four consecutively of nothing but Bushes or Clintons in the Oval Office. The recent financial faux pas surrounding a criminal campaign donor highlighted just the themes of long held power creating rot that Hillary would like to avoid. Worse it reverberated with the dynastic succession issue because it echoed the White House coffees campaign finance scandals of her husband and Al Gore. She is a dynamic person. Bill will likely be a net asset, but this meta-theme will not go away. She may overcome it and win, but it will be her millstone.

There is no doubting Hillary status as the presumptive nominee, but with the thoughts laid out above burbling in the mindstew, the Clarion was intrigued some weeks back to see two wildly disparate media entities run their cover story on John Edwards. These two entities, one, a local Raleigh-Durham free sheet, the Independent Weekly, printed in a tabloid shape on newspaper, and the other Esquire, a national, glossy, two bits plus cover price, loaded with fancy pics and celebrities.

These two media entities are not only on different ends of the cost at the newsstand spectrum, but a partial list of their advertisers emphasizes how far apart, across the divides of global, local, income, economics, region: North & South, they represent. Exactly what this says about the demographics of their readership is beyond the scope of this inquiry.

Esquire advertisers: Dolce & Gabbana, Samsung, Kool, Yves Saint Laurent, Nordstrom, Bose, Coke, Land Rover, Aldo Bruce, Nissan, Honda, Hennessey, Bally, Giorgio Armani (partial list)

Independent Weekly advertisers: North Carolina Museum of Art, Duke Summer Music in the Garden program, Coors Light, Anderson Homes, Frisky Business, Koka Booth Amphitheater, Lincoln Theater, The Cat’s Cradle, S & H Cleaning Service, Teaser’s Palace, Kroger, plus current movie ads, and a huge classifieds section with houses for sale and rent, employment, cars, musical instruments, miscellaneous and personals. (partial list)

The fact that Edwards was featured on the cover’s of both these publications does not mean he is the favorite, or anything but third. What it does say is they are casting about looking widely for and at potential candidates. The Democrats feel there is no way they should lose this one, this election. They want to be careful not to pick a losing candidate. This is maybe not so much the perspective average voter, (except perhaps in New Hampshire and Iowa, which won’t be quite as important this time.) But articles like these underline that people in the Democratic establishment, power brokers, the media, prominent endorsers (Tom Harkn for one example among many) haven’t made up their minds. And that they don’t yet believe their only choices are Hillary or Obama.

Labels: 2008's President, Politics, Predictions