Thursday, January 10, 2008
Dewey Defeats Clinton?
Posted by Clancy DuBos on Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 6:32 AM
QUESTION FROM A READER:
Was Hillary Clinton’s come-from-behind win in New Hampshire as historic as pundits — such as Keith Olbermann, who called it “the Titanic of political upsets,” and Brian Williams, who invoked “Dewey Defeats Truman” — would have us believe?
CLANCY’S ANSWER:
The short answer is no. I’m not convinced that Hillary Clinton was ever that far behind Barack Obama in New Hampshire. For starters, New Hampshire has always been good to the Clintons; voters there have had a near-love affair (pardon the metaphor) with Bill since 1992, and Hillary clearly benefited from his appearances there on her behalf this go-round. Also, give her the credit she deserves. Like her or hate her, Hillary is a tenacious campaigner and a smart politician. Also, Obama’s political strength is also his underbelly — young voters. Yeah, they turned out for him in Iowa, comparatively speaking, but in New Hampshire they returned to form … and stayed home in droves. Moreover, the Iowa caucuses are small-turnout affairs to begin with, so even a relatively small spike in young voter turnout there can (and, in this case, did) have a dramatic impact. The opposite happened in New Hampshire, leading to Obama’s second-place finish.
As for the so-called pundits’ over-the-top descriptions of Hillary’s “comeback,” my sense is that the “experts” blew it by proclaiming Obama the winner before the votes were cast — and therefore they HAD to resort to hyperbole in analyzing her win. The only alternative would have been to admit that they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about in the first place … and you know that ain’t gonna happen.
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I think the historic implications are these: We are seeing signs that the public is fed up with pollsters and the media putting their spins on the elections before the American public has had its say. I've never seen the pollsters and the public behave as badly, as baldly, as irresponsibly as they have this election cycle. A few hundred people caucus in some Iowa junior high cafetoriums, and the cable networks are behaving like it's Election Day. Not that the print media are much better; the Weekly Standard rushed a cover story on "The Fall of the House of Clinton," only to be humiliated 24 hours later when Clinton took New Hampshire. Before Iowa, the media were clearly salivating for a Clinton-Romney or Clinton-Giuliani matchup. I think the public delivered Obama-Huckabee at least partially in response to the predetermined media frame...and New Hampshire delivered Clinton-McCain to continue the message: IT'S NOT YOUR ELECTION. IT'S OURS. And the media, by and large, still fails to get it. Everyone seems to agree that there's a bipartisan desire for "change," but I don't know why the national political media doesn't realize that people want THEM to change as well. Everyone I've talked to, across the spectrum, is furious at the media, and the "change" message they'd like to send to Chris Matthews, Brit Hume, et al. is: step back, step off, and stop twiddling around with pundits and polls at the expense of the issues. Here's a radical notion: instead of filling endless hours with speculation better befitting an Oscar race, why not spend the time explaining how the candidates' positions differ?
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