Reply #262: #1: It is a subthread about what happened in the primaries...

[AP]

...which makes all this a relevant discussion. And I made this point before: if you want to talk about the candidates at DU, you have to go where the conversation is. If I posted this on its own, it would drop. If I post it in here, people will talk about it.

#2: Edwards's campaign took people and lawn signs out and left in some TV and ROBOcalls. They also cut back on trips to OK. Those are just the facts. It's a reflection of the fact that they were conceding it to Clark. I'm not trying to bullshit you here. People in the campaign were ecstatic with that result, but disappointed they took the resources out. It was another state where, in the last three days, Edwards's numbers went up dramatically when everyone else, I suspect even Clark in OK where he won, had numbers that were going down. In fact, I believe Edwards had a greater increase in the last three days in most states than even Kerry who was winning. The thing that causes that is ads, appearances and local media, and not CNN et al (whose media messages were consistent over all days, and not just the last three days). I believe that if you have any influence over which democrat makes it on the ticket, you're going to want the person who is sticky and increasing support and not the person losing support. If you go from 40 to 30 over three days and still win, you're in bigger trouble than the person who went from 10 to 25 and came in second.

#3: After IA and NH, It's NOT about winning states. It's about winning delegates. And there are more delegates in SC and MO than OK, ND and NM. It's also about proving that you can beat the other guy, which is why people are more interested in states where everyone is running -- which is why SC (and TN and VA and WI) was so interesting. (Incidentally, NM was important because all the candidates wanted to prove they could get Latino votes -- so despite the small number of delegates, they all ran there.)

#4: I would have killed for Edwards to get more coverage in the week between Iowa and NH when my perception was that every time I turned on the TV they were STILL talking about Dean (even after he really disappointed in IA). Throughout the primaries I would have killed for more coverage of Edwards actually talking directly to the public. I would have killed for coverage of Edward's position on the issues, which I think happened exactly once: WI, on Feb 17, with these results: Kerry: 327,438   39.6%, Edwards, John 283,376   34.3%; Dean 150,548   18.2%; Kucinich, Dennis J. 27,306 3.3%. Again, Edwards went up from something like 12 or 15% to 34.3% in four or five days -- and it wasn't because of CNN's consistent "nice personality" coverage. It was because in Wisconsin they were actually having a debate about the value of an hour labor when you're outsourcing jobs. CNN doesn't talk about issues, ever, so they are not the reason Edwards did well in WI.

As for your experience with Edwards -- that's interesting, because I had the same feeling. I saw him on TV and read his positions, and loved him. He was talking about all the things I thought were important -- tax code, class, education. I thought this year was going to be a race between hope and fear, and I thought he embodied hope. I thought that the only kind of campaign that would beat the fascists was the same kind of campaign FDR ran in '32 -- and Edwards even mentioned that campaign in a speech.

However, the first time I saw him in person, I stood five feet in front of him. He gave a great speech. I watched a crowd of random passers-by congregate. I saw heads start to nod. When it was over, he turned to the state assemblyman who hosted him and gave him a long politician's smug blink and my heart sank -- even after listening to a great speech, I was ready to give that blink more weight than anything I'd heard. Then a Mexican immigrant from the kitchen of the restaurant (he was wearing an apron and the speech was outside a restaurant) -- a guy to whom Edwards had probably introduced himself about 30 minutes earlier -- came up to him, and, obviously moved by the content of Edwards's speech, got in a long discussion with Edwards about his problems. The veneer of the politician totally disappeared, and the two of them spoke man to man, with Edwards doing most of the listening for a long time while the guy gesticulated and furrowed his brow and looked like he was going to cry. Edwards listened intently the entire time. After the guy finished, Edwards whispered in they guy's ear, the guy nodded and you could see the guy's anxieties slip away. They shook hands. The guy clearly felt much better.

So, I thought to myself, the politicians' manner? Whatever works, I guess. Who am I to second guess what worked to make this guy connect with juries. He's been persuading groups of people to do the right thing with incredible success for most of his life. Should I assume he never blinked in front of the jury? I also don't like the haircut. But I guess it's working for him with large groups of people. The last thing I expect is for most Americans to feel the same way I feel about things as subtle as the appropriate length of blink or a haircut.

But seeing him talk to that fry cook or dishwasher or whatever he was -- well, to me, that was the real John Edwards -- not only in terms of being a human being, but in terms of what a great politician should be able to do. Right there was the whole transaction. That cook didn't know Edwards from Adam when Edwards walked through the kitchen. That cook totally understood the argument Edwards was making about America in the speech. That cook went to Edwards with a problem. Edwards listened. Edwards listened some more. Edwards whispered something in the guy's ear. The guy had hope. What Edwards was doing was working. I mean, it was REALLY working -- including the speech, which was punctuated with one tiny gesture that I found a bit grating. So what's more important? That one tiny gesture? Or that whole transaction? The whole transaction is more important: talking to people about things that matter to them and giving them hope. What happened in that street corner speech was what happened in the campaign.

#5: My opinion is that Kerry was half-way between Clark and Edwards. Clark was all-war all the time. I know, I know: he was an economics professor, he's smart, he had a single-parent mom who raised him. But that was more of the secret life of Wes Clark for the voters. Clark chose to run on the idea that the Commander-in-Chief was a terrible military commander and that we needed one who knew what he was doing. There wasn't so much a connection in the public's mind why a general who cares about progressive taxation, educating America, etc., is better than the one we have. The argument was basically "He's a better General, because he is a general, and guess what? He's a social liberal too, which is like icing on the cake."

Had Clark tried to argue why liberals make better generals -- if that was part of his persona -- he might have connected with Democrats who are looking for a discussion of those core issues, but the whole package wasn't tied together coherently -- and it might be because a lot of the core elements of being a liberal are incompatible with being a good general. How do you say that power (economic, cultural and political) needs to be decentralized while also saying that you believe that your military skills can keep America safe? How do you win as a Democrat while saying concentrated executive and military power in my hands are the key to a safe future? How do you resolve the image of the general with the more libertarian impulses among Democrats who are looking for a government that doesn't tell them what to do? I do believe that Clark wanted to get the government out of the lives of gay Democrats, and I believe that he probably wouldn't be opposed to devolving political power down to local levels so that communities can fight polluters, and things like that. But running as a general who's going to keep America safe might not alleviate the concerns of the environmentalists and gay democrats the way they are alleviated by a senator who has actually legislated to protect the environment.

So, Clark seemed to be one end of the scale: someone who represented in the minds of voters a total focus on national security. Edwards was at the other end of the spectrum: he totally represented a focus on middle-class opportunity. Kerry was a guy with enough war background and enough background as a guy who legislated to protect the working class's jobs & health care and to protect the economy. Kerry covered ALL the bases. He covered Sharpton's race and religion base. He covered Clark's military base. He covered Kucinich's far left base (with his voting record). He covered Edwards's class base (by being a guy who spent some time in a suit working in an office fighting for victims and by raising a family through a little bit of adversity and by being someone the unions liked). I think it's obvious that Kerry was the winner because he looked really well-rounded to most voters: he wasn't' too much of any one thing, and a little of everything -- and having Clark in the race in some ways may have helped Kerry because by adding actual military service into the equation (which was something none of the other candidates had) he moved the average towards Kerry -- if nobody cared about military service, then Kerry's mattered less, but with Clark saying military service matters, lots of voters thought, "well, Kerry has that too."

And another thing about Clark that I believe is that, like Dean, I think people liked the idea of Clark when most of the impression of the candidate came from national media (Clark and Dean were tied for first in national polls in December -- and national polls are based on something other than a first-hand impression of the candidate). As direct contact supplanted national media (as there was less mediation of the candidates, and voters got to see more of the candidate in person, either in the candidate's own ads or in local media, or the debates, or personal appearances) Clark lost ground because he didn't cover enough of the different things that voters care about: he talked too much about the war.

For people who only cared about war, who thought it was the most important thing, he really got a lot of love. But the thing that's important to remember is that most voters -- not even when you include republicans -- thought war and terror were the most important issues. And even a smaller percentage of Democrats felt that war and terror were the most important issues. Most Democrats wanted someone who said something to them about jobs, class and opportunity, and about hope and not fear: and that's where Edwards was doing so well, but that's also where Kerry, who was the average of all the candidates, was also doing well. He did enough to keep the people who cared about war happy, and enough to keep the people who wanted hope about jobs and about the economy happy.

I think the things that people liked most about Kerry are totally symbolized by his commercial where they show that short clip of him walking through the jungle with an M16. In that ad, there's a pictures of him in a suit, and then just a shirt, and in that shot in Vietnam, he's not wearing an officer's uniform. People saw that and saw a well-rounded person, who probably cares about the little guy because he was a little guy, fighting side by side with black men and Latinos and poor white guys -- the same people he legislated to protect as a senator. That covered everything, for a lot of people: 9/11 and their jobs.

I really think that's why Kerry got the nomination and I think that if Clark had run in Iowa, Kerry would have run that commercial in Iowa and would have won with it, and I think Edwards still would have gotten the votes he got from people who were moved by hearing him in person make his persuasive argument about class and opportunity, and I suspect that Clark would have finished lower than his December poll numbers, along with Dean, and Edwards would have finished higher than his December poll numbers. And it would have been interesting to have seen where that went, but I think it would have gone in the same direction that things went anyway...