Citizen Brand

You can't make this stuff up

We will be talking about the 2008 presidential election for decades to come.  And it won't be because of voters in Chicago accused of voting more than once (Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960) or hanging chads and Supreme Court votes (Bush v. Gore in 2000).  No, this time we will be thinking back on an election that has had candidates that voters actually were supporting and issues that were actually being discussed.  And here it is the day after Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday and we still don't know exactly who will be on the ballot in November.  Isn't it great?

A Hollywood screenwriter looking for work right now instead of a picket line could not write some of the story lines that are unfolding right before our very eyes.  Rush Limbaugh, the conservatives' favorite comedic radio host is doing everything he can to submarine the apparent Republican front running John McCain.  Mike Huckabee, who has no money compared to everyone else, manages to win a few states on Tuesday catapulting himself into top challenger status in the GOP race.  Meanwhile, Mitt Romney would have to spend $1.33 billion dollars to win enough delegates to take the nomination away from either McCain or Huckabee.  That is based on what he has spent thus far to win the paltry number of delegates he has scraped off the floor since the snows of Iowa.

Then there is the Democratic race.  This time last year, Hillary Clinton was all but anointed as the nominee.  Turn the page to February, 2008 and she finds herself running neck and neck with Barack Obama.  The first legitimate chance for either a woman or an African-American to be elected President of the United States and they wake up each morning realizing they are battling each other for the right to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  And today, she revealed she had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it going.  Obama is out-raising her in donations by a big margin.

And the talk is already beginning of a deadlocked convention and smoke filled back rooms deciding the Democratic nominee.  Wait a minute, there won't be any smoke filled rooms inside any building in Denver for the convention.  Those meetings will have to occur outside.

This is what I mean.  You cannot make this stuff up.  We are witness to a remarkable story in 2008.  Don't blink.  You might miss something.

Horse Race Journalism

As the famous line goes - "We have seen the enemy and it is us."  We want to believe that we are paying attention to presidential candidates and their stands on issues so we can make informed and competent decisions in the voting booth.  But we can't help ourselves.  We get sucked into the "horse race."  Who is ahead in the Zogby Poll today; the New York Times poll tomorrow; and, the Nickelodeon/ESPN/O Magazine Poll due out tomorrow.....

As Super Duper Tuesday approaches, the latest national polling shows Barack Obama surging and closing the gap on Hillary Clinton.  It shows John McCain building a lead over Mitt Romney and it seems clear that Mike Huckabee is submarining Romney by splitting the "conservative" vote.

Polls are instructive.  They do give us a sense of where things stand at that moment in time.  But then we need a new poll right away to keep the buzz going....is Obama still surging?  Is McCain really starting to pull away from Romney or will the next poll tell us something different.

And so it goes.  The media serves as the drug dealer on the corner feeding the horse race frenzy.  Read this piece by Jay Rosen over at Pressthink to go a little deeper on this subject.  As you will see in Jay's piece, the media hasn't faired so well in their horse race predictions this year which has further contributed to this once or twice in a century electoral experience.  Of course the media's lack of success has also caused us no shortage of roller coaster rides as they attempt to fix their errors.  Jay points to one ray of sunshine in this exchange between Tom Brokaw and Chris Matthews on the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

"“BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

“MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

“BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

“MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.”

Matthews was being the realist: Without who’s-going-to-win, “we” might as well stay home. Brokaw (now long retired as the face of the NBC brand) gave him an apt warning in response: “The people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.” But he was speaking as if the media had a mind and could shift course."

A novel concept indeed.....let the voters vote and then report on how they voted.

Bush-Clinton Fatigue

Hillary Clinton had a big applause line in the Hollywood Showdown starring her and Barack Obama at the Kodak Theater on Thursday night.  She was asked how she could possibly represent change when the same two families (hers and the Bushes) have been in The White House since 1980.  Her response, while clever, points out why Republicans are praying every night that she is the Democratic nominee.

I paraphrase a bit, but in essence she said it took a Clinton to clean up the first Bush presidency and it would take another Clinton to clean up the second Bush presidency.  It was met with the biggest applause of the night from the glitterati of Hollywood in the audience.  Heck, CNN even went to commercial over the applause as if they had just handed out the Oscar for Best Actress!

Can you imagine what we would think if two families in the United Kingdom, or France, or Germany, or Japan had basically shared executive power for 28 years straight?  Interesting to think about it from that perspective isn't it?

Super Duper Tuesday is coming and it may be the day that the November ballot for President begins to take final form.  There is tremendous interest in this election as there should be.  We all have different motivations for making decisions when we vote.  I have to believe that whether it is conscious or unconscious, there is an underlying feeling in many voters that 28 years of the Bushes and the Clintons is enough.  We will see on Tuesday if I'm right.

An important postscript - it was amazing to see a woman and an African-American sitting side by side knowing that one of them can be elected President of the United States later this year.

 

The nerve of those voters

All of us here at Citizen Brand - that would be me I guess - have to be willing to admit when we may have gotten ahead of ourselves.  But wait, I don't think we did.  Barack Obama still looks like the real thing from this vantage point.  So what exactly happened in New Hampshire the other night?

What happened was nothing more than what had been predicted to happen for a few weeks - Hillary Clinton would win New Hampshire and so likely would John McCain.  And that is exactly what happened when the voters spoke.  It is what happened between Iowa and New Hampshire among the media; the pollsters; the pundits; and the consultants that needs to be questioned. 

Think about it.  Two of the least ethnically diverse and not exactly wildly liberal states in the nation have said an African American or a woman should be President of the United States.  Forget the horse race the media foists on us every four years and focus on what has happened in the first two official contests of the 2008 Presidential election.  On the other side of the aisle, Republican voters have given the nod to a true evangelical and the straight talking, shoot from the hip, Vietnam POW.  Obama, Clinton, Huckabee and McCain are not the kind of candidates we are used to seeing in the race for the White House.

Lost in the shuffle right now are the two guys who we have been conditioned to seeing in the race - John Edwards and Mitt Romney.  Two white guys with good hair and good talking points.  Either one of these guys might make a good president.  But after seven years of the gang that can't shoot straight with us, the USA is ready for a big change.  And the differences on display for us with the Obama, Clinton, Huckabee and McCain variety hour have a little something for everyone.

Thus we have seen a different winner in every contest thus far.  (Wyoming GOP went for Romney by the way.)  Which brings us back to those pesky voters.  In 2008, I believe the more the media and the pollsters try to tell us what they think is going to happen, the less likely it is to happen.  If New Hampshire taught us anything, it may have taught us to wait for the votes to be counted and then see who the winners will be.

Voters are on to the exit pollsters.  After waiting 45 minutes to cast a secret ballot, the last thing any right thinking person should do is tell a complete stranger how they voted and why.  Let 2008 be the death of the exit polls.  Good riddance.

On to Nevada, South Carolina and 20 or so other states by February 5.  This is fun.  And it is important.