POLITICS

Where’s the Bandwagon?

Neither candidate is making inroads into the other’s base. We may be doomed to more weeks of trench warfare.

by William Schneider

Sat. Apr. 26, 2008


Seven weeks of campaigning in Pennsylvania, and in the end, nothing much changed.

Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 9 points—virtually the same margin she won by in New Jersey, just to the east of Pennsylvania, on February 5; and in Ohio, just to the west of Pennsylvania, on March 4. Clinton won on Tuesday by beating Obama among women 57 percent to 43 percent and among white voters 62 percent to 38 percent, according to the network exit polls. Those are just about the same numbers she got in Ohio. Obama is still having trouble attracting the blue-collar vote. Non-college-educated Democrats voted 40 percent for Obama in Ohio and 42 percent for him in Pennsylvania.

Each campaign has established a base. Clinton’s base? Women, seniors, blue-collar voters, Catholics, and Latinos. Obama’s base? African-Americans, young voters, affluent professionals, and independents. Neither candidate is making inroads into the other’s base. We may be doomed to more weeks of trench warfare, with each side trying to rally higher turnout from its base.

Clinton finds herself in a difficult position because she’s running against a movement. Ilyse Hogue, communications director of MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Barack Obama, explained it this way: “This is not a top-down movement. There is no one person who is going to call the shots.… The grassroots activists all over the country are not going to be stopped.” They were furious about last week’s ABC News debate and responded with an outpouring of online rage: “a shameful night for the U.S. media,” “worst debate ever,” “the television journalism equivalent to FEMA’s response to the Katrina disaster.”

“We’re not living in the world of sound bites any more. We’re living in the world of sound blasts and a 15-minute news cycle,” said Andrew Rasiej, founder of the website TechPresident, who is not aligned with either Democratic candidate.

We’ve seen political movements before: Barry Goldwater in 1964, George McGovern in 1972, Ross Perot in 1992. All three failed to win the election. But each of them transformed American politics. They brought new people, new issues, and new passions into the political arena.

The Obama campaign also adds a new tool to rally voters and sustain a movement—the Internet. The potential of the Web as a fundraising tool was first demonstrated by presidential contenders John McCain in 2000 and Howard Dean in 2004. This year, Obama has created a full-blown alternative to the public financing system and a new system of grassroots organizing. “It is happening spontaneously as a result of the Internet, e-mail, and social network platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace,” Rasiej said.

Suppose Obama maintains his lead in pledged delegates and popular votes. What would happen if the Democratic superdelegates decide to nominate Clinton? “If they are perceived as undercutting the will of the voters, which right now is Senator Obama, we’re going to see an enormous amount of frustration,” MoveOn’s Hogue said, an even bigger outpouring of anger and frustration than we saw after last week’s debate.

Suppose Obama wins the nomination. What would McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, be facing in the general election? In Rasiej’s view, “A race between McCain and Obama would be a battle between 20th-century politics and 21st-century politics, where online organizing is going to go right up against the traditional model—the inside-the-Beltway, old school of politics.”

Previous political movements, such as Goldwater’s and McGovern’s, failed because they were ideological and divisive—us versus them. That’s exactly how Republicans aim to defeat Obama: by exposing him as a left-wing ideologue. “Barack Obama, if he wins the Democratic nomination, will be the most liberal candidate for president of the United States in the history of our country,” said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

When Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania were asked who they thought would end up winning the Democratic nomination, they said Obama, 55 percent to 43 percent—even while they voted for Clinton by just about the same margin. The odd thing about this campaign is that, although Democratic voters believe that Obama will be their nominee, there is no evidence of an Obama bandwagon.