Tuesday, March 20, 2007
"Super-Duper" Tuesday strategery
Other than to mock John Kerry and Al Gore, I don't write much about politics because political analysis is not my strong suit. I do, however, have a couple of observations about the structure of next year's presidential primary season.
As any blog reader knows, there are now a large number of populous states that have moved their presidential primary from traditional dates in the spring to February 5, 2008, hot on the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire. This graphic from Sunday's New York Times makes the point rather, er, graphically (click to enlarge and clarify). Not only is "Super Tuesday" a month earlier in 2008 (February 5 compared to March 2, 2004), but there are many more states stuffed into it. In the map on the right, the colored states have either moved their primary to February 5, or are probably going to do so.
This obviously poses a huge strategic challenge to the candidates, and puts enormous pressure on the decision to spend a lot of time in Iowa and New Hampshire. In the past an underfunded candidate could meet everybody in those two states. If he pulled off an upset the Big Mo would shift in his favor and the money would pour in quickly enough to be useful in the big states where politics is more about the media buy than the kissing of babies. Now, the dark horse who wins or places in Iowa or New Hampshire may not be able to raise and spend money fast enough to turn the corner in the big states by February 5. Only a huge surge of rapturous coverage from the mainstream media will be able to change the dynamic in the few days before Super Duper Tuesday.
What are the probable consequences of all of this?
First, the new schedule clearly favors candidates who have already raised a lot of money, or can raise a lot of money in the next few months. They will then be able to have their cake and eat it too, for they will spend their money on advertising in California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, and still meet just about every voter in Iowa and New Hampshire. This dynamic goes a long way to explaining why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been going at it hammer and tongs over Hollywood dollars.
Second, the door may have opened to a "Bloomberg" candidacy from some billionaire out to change the world. If early money in huge quantities is the key to victory on February 5 and therefore the ticket to the nomination, it is at least conceivable that somebody with a spare $500 million could jump in relatively late and grab enough delegates to win or at least broker a deal. The Wall Street Journal suggested this possibility in an editorial($) this morning.
Third, the mainstream media and, perhaps, influential bloggers will have a narrow opportunity to recharacterize the race between Iowa/New Hampshire and Super Duper Tuesday. Any victorious dark horse will depend almost totally on publicity from newspapers and television news, and the big spenders who bet on Super Duper Tuesday will be doing everything they can to interdict that publicity. If you enjoy politics as blood sport, the period between January 14 (Iowa) and February 5, 2008 will feature bread and circuses enough for a generation.
What will the media do during these fateful 22 days? In the main, they will try to create a dynamic that will build the most audience for the longest time. That leads me to the next point, an observation of my step-father (and, I am sure, many others).
Fourth, what if the race in one or both parties remains confusing after Super Duper Tuesday? One of the reasons for front-end loading the primary season is that the party elites believe they are served best in the general election if they can determine a presumptive nominee early. That ends the intramural bickering, which tends to drive candidates to say extreme things that then bite them in the general election. If the bickering ends on February 5, the presumptive nominee can play to the center with a unified message for nine months. With the luxury of that time, even Barack Obama could sound like, oh, Gerald Ford by the general election.
But what if one or both parties emerges from February 5 with no clear winner? With few large states left, the rest of the primary season could turn into a vicious state-by-state war of attrition. The media would love it, but I fear for the impact on American governance and civility. Between posturing in the Congress, idiotic campaign pledges to very parochial constituencies, and secret deals to pool delegates, the only winners will be certain single-issue voters and activists. That will be a shame.
Fifth, if one party determines a presumptive nominee on February 5 and the other does not, the party that unifies first will have a huge advantage in the general election. The other party's intramural bloodbath will exhaust campaign staffs, drain the donor base, demotivate losing activists, embitter rivals, and generate enough idiotic public statements and mini-scandals to fuel endless opposition advertising during the general election campaign. Indeed, the fractured party's eventual nominee may have to cut so many deals with activists that he or she will never be able to move to the center.
Sixth, if the dream scenario of each party is to be the only party to choose a presumptive nominee on February 5, then we should expect enormous top-down pressure to force weaker candidates out of the race even before Iowa. We should also expect legislative and other initiatives that are calculated to expose rifts in the other party before February 5. Read the news from now on with that thought in mind. Your friends will think you are a cynic, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing what is going on.
The last question, then, is whether this structure favors Republicans, in general, or Democrats. My own opinion is that it will favor Republicans for one very simple reason: the base of the Republican party has far fewer single-issue activists in it than the Democratic party, which has for some time struggled to balance between labor unions, "civil rights" groups, environmentalists, anti-globalists, and doves and hawks, trial lawyers and Silicon Valley liberals. Each of these groups pressures Democratic candidates to "move to the center" on the issue favored by some other group. Republicans have far fewer professional activists in their base, and therefore a much easier time developing a unified position. That has not always been true and will not be true forever, but I think it will remain true in 2008.
Whatever happens, it is not hard to wonder whether the current system is serving the country. In all likelihood, both parties are going to nominate candidates on the basis of their respective abilities to plan and execute on a multi-state victory on a single day next February. Is there any meaningful relationship between that skill and subsequent effectiveness as president of the United States? I think we all know the answer to that question.
Your lucid, constructive, interesting comments are, as always, more than appreciated, whether from the left or right.
6 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Tue Mar 20, 11:09:00 AM:
If you think about it, the commerical imperative of the media is to prolong and proliferate candidacies. All of the massive fundraising goes in large measure to pay the media companies for time. It has always been a huge economic boondoggle for the media, and it is only growing in magnitude and relative importance. Just follow the media stocks and their earnings during election years. It used to be lumpier (every 4 years). Now be entending the circus into a permanent circus/cycle, it smooths and grows the earnings.
So the media has a commercial incentive to promote viable candidacies, fundraising and competition.
I think that tends to be fine, and consistent with good democracy. It may promote certain flawed candidates beyond their natural expiration date, but that's ok.
Let the games begin.
By Diane Wilson, at
Tue Mar 20, 12:25:00 PM:
I suspect that media motivation won't change too much; it's always been about sensationalism first and agendas second. Neither of those have changed.
As far as whether the campaign calendar changes favor anyone, it's always been about the ability to structure and execute a multi-state campaign for November, so Super Duper Tuesday will (possibly) filter for this same ability in February. What it might avoid is an extremist like McGovern, or a muddling incompetent like Kerry who got in simply by being dubbed "electable".
As a resident of North Carolina, where the primary has always been so late as to be meaningless, 'm kind of looking forward to participating in Super Duper Tuesday
By 
, at
Tue Mar 20, 01:14:00 PM:
housekeeping
Smoove Dictum:
If the topic sentence has a vowel in it the closer you are to Vanna White.
By , at
Tue Mar 20, 01:17:00 PM:
housekeeping
Hard problems maxim.
The harder the problem the more you will need Jack Bauer and the need to buy a vowel.
By Escort81, at
Tue Mar 20, 03:03:00 PM:
I agree that overall, Republicans are relatively more unified, but with Rudy taking center stage, there is at least a chance that anti-abortion Republicans may go hard core single-issue and bolt.
It just seems to me that the nine months between early February (when the nominees will be effectively decided) and early November is a long, long time. I would rather see primaries in May and June, conventions in August, and the general in November. Obviously, that will never happen. I am an independent voter in PA, which doesn't provide for open primaries, so I suppose it doesn't matter to me specifically.
CP's point is a good one about media buys. I think I would like to see a healthy debate on why media companies have a right to that revenue, when (at least in the old pre-cable days) the airwaves were owned by the public, and the public would be better served by major candidates getting free air time. By not having to raise funds from special interests to pay for air time (production costs being private and separate), the elected official is less in hock to that interest (whether Big Labor on the Dem side or Big Oil/Pharma on the Rep side), and the public as a whole is presumably better off in the long run. I don't think I want to see complete public financing of elections -- there should still be some Darwinian competition -- just the media part subsidized by the networks forgoing revenue that I am not sure belongs to them in the first place, if you take a strict constructionist view of the founding documents of the FCC.
By , at
Tue Mar 20, 04:48:00 PM:
I think that there will be an eventual reaction to the frontloading of so many primaries. Perhaps the governors and state party chairmen will run their own slates and pick candidates in the backrooms, just as in the bad old days that produced Lincoln, Grant, both Roosevelts, and other dead white males.
chsw
