The American people are ready for a Democratic president, but they don’t necessarily like their choices.
“[Stan] Greenberg points to the generic presidential ballot question. Among likely voters, 49 percent would select the Democratic candidate and 36 percent the Republican candidate if the election were held today.
But when the names of actual candidates were plugged into the question — in this case the two national frontrunners — the spread narrows dramatically. Democrat Hillary Clinton leads Republican Rudolph Giuliani by 3 percentage points — 47 percent to 44 percent.”
Picking a candidate in the primaries involves a calculation. Maybe you feel Dennis Kucinich is saying all the right things…or maybe it is Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo that is floating your boat. But you know they can’t win. Do you vote for them anyway, or do you really, really want to make sure that the nomination doesn’t go to Hillary Clinton or Rudy Guiliani? Do you vote for the candidate with the best chance to derail them?
Most people opt for the second option. They vote for the least objectionable candidate among the frontrunners. The media plays a major role in telling us who those frontrunners are, but they do, at least, base their assessment on metrics like the amount of money raised, endorsements, and early polling data. Yet, for months, John Edwards was leading in the Iowa polls and he was never treated as a frontrunner by the press, which inexplicably hates him. The media played a huge roll in the 2000 primaries by fawning all over St. John McCain’s Straight Talk Express while alternately deriding and ignoring the campaign of Bill Bradley (who raised more money than Gore).
Right now there are three non-frontrunner candidates that are eliciting passion in the race. Rep. Ron Paul is outraising John McCain and has legions of online supporters. Mike Huckabee just crushed at the Family Research Council’s conference. And Chris Dodd is getting mad respect for his principled stands on our civil liberties. But, as maha points out, the people don’t get much say in the nominating process.
I’ve been wondering why there doesn’t seem to be more movement toward Huckabee in the ranks of white conservative evangelicals. It turns out that whenever white conservative evangelicals get a close look at Huckabee, they flock to him like pigeons to bread crumbs. It’s the leadership of the “values voters” movement who aren’t flocking. I can only guess why that might be, but I suspect that power and money are factors, somehow.
The various Powers That Be like to go through the motions of asking us ordinary people what we think, but ultimately they don’t care. Eventually they’ll settle on whatever candidates promise them the most perks and influence, and then they’ll go about marketing those candidates to the rest of us, like toothpaste. Meanwhile, any candidate who fails to meet with their approval simply will not get the media exposure he or she needs to be competitive.
Note that I’m not saying I want Huckabee to be the nominee. Underneath Huckabee’s nice-guy exterior is a five-alarm whackjob. The point is that what went on at the FRC exemplifies how we’re all being jerked around.
Maha is referring to this:
Mitt Romney was announced from the podium Saturday afternoon as the winner of the Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Straw Poll,” narrowly edging Mike Huckabee.
But it turns out that the 5,775-vote total included thousands of people who had voted online, and could have become eligible by paying as little as $1 to join FRC Action, the legislative action arm of Family Research Council.
Although the audience at the Washington Hilton was not told, the crowd favorite among the 952 attendees who voted in person turned out to be Huckabee by a mile. He got 51 percent of the in-person votes, compared to just 10 percent for Mitt Romney.
This led to headlines like this:
San Jose Mercury News: Values voters’ lean toward Romney
Toronto Star: No GOP saviour in sight for the evangelical right
Chicago Tribune: Values voters back Romney, Huckabee
No hint there that the actual conferees gave Huckabee over 50% of the vote, and Romney
a mere 10.4%. It is in this way that the press prevents Huckabee, or Dodd, or Edwards, or Paul, from becoming frontrunners. After all, wouldn’t those numbers suggest that the ‘evangelical right’ has seen a savior?
The Iowa caucuses are not far off. If you support what Chris Dodd (or Edwards, or Obama, or someone else) is doing you need to find some way to play your own small part in letting Iowa voters know how you feel. Ideas?
