David Corn has an interesting, and largely persuasive, piece today, describing what may prove to be a high hurdle for Barack Obama’s campaign on Feb. 5 — at that point, the race moves away from his strengths as a candidate.
If the Democratic presidential race is between [Obama and Clinton] it boils down, in a way to this: Clinton says, believe in my resume; Obama says, believe in me.
Clinton is pitching herself as a woman of experience who can start working for you and our children on Day One. Look, 35 years of policy wonkery and advocacy. Look, a record of accomplishment…. Obama is selling himself as…himself. That is, Obama is insisting that he has the ability to create a new politics — a transformative, overcoming-the-divide politics — because of who he is, because of his character and considerable personal attributes. Sure, he points to his past as a community organizer and civil rights lawyers and to his work in the Illinois state senator and the U.S. Senate to bolster his argument that he possesses the right stuff. But his is not a campaign of resume-waving. He’s running on his soul. And Obama goes further than asking voters to hire him as their advocate. He issues an invitation: join me in this grand cause to change politics, change government, and change the nation. He speaks of his campaign as a movement and compares it to the great social movements of America’s past.
With Obama, it’s not about his career highlights, it’s about him. To buy his case, a voter must believe in him, have faith in him, place hope in him — must have (or feel) a connection with him. And this is where the problem kicks in.
That sounds about right to me. Obama’s win in Iowa was very impressive, but it came after months of campaigning in a small state, in a style that played to Obama’s strengths. Voters, to borrow a phrase, got to “kick the tires and look under the hood” of a large Democratic field. Candidates showed up at their homes. They got to ask questions, get answers, and interact with the field the way voters in other states can’t. These folks, after getting up close and personal with all of them for almost a year, and looking each of them in the eye, preferred Obama to Edwards and Clinton in a big way.
But the campaign conditions in Iowa won’t be repeated. Indeed, on Feb. 5, it’ll be the polar opposite — so long retail politics, hello wholesale.
The election will be shaped by Supersaturated Tuesday, February 5, when two dozen states, including some of the largest in the union, will hold primaries or caucuses. No candidate will be able to reach large number of voters in an up-close-and-personal manner. There will be big rallies in California and elsewhere. But the people who show up will be a minuscule fraction of the electorate, and these events may not receive extensive local media coverage — absent Oprah or a newsworthy mishap. (California television news is notorious for shortchanging political coverage. There are, after all, so many car chases to chase after.)
At this stage, the candidates will be reaching voters mainly through commercials. A television spot is a fine medium for a candidate to share his or her resume, to list his or her accomplishments. It is much tougher to convey the intangibles of hope, faith, and transcendence in a 30- or 60-second spot. The bottom line: advantage to Clinton.
In fact, I’d go even further than this, because Clinton starts off with a big advantage in every Feb. 5 state, by virtue of who she is. Except in those cases when a president or vice president is running, Clinton is about as close to an incumbent as you can get. If you were to poll Democrats in every state in the country on, say, Dec. 1, 2006, asking for their presidential preference, you’d probably find that Clinton led, by a fairly wide margin, in 49 of them. If you did the same poll on Dec. 1, 2007, I suspect you’d see similar results — 47 states, maybe 48. These are people who haven’t seen any campaign ads, haven’t watched the debates, and haven’t received any direct mail or robocalls. They know Hillary, they know her last name, they’ve liked her for nearly two decades, and that’s enough to give her an edge.
With more than 20 states voting on Feb. 5, this means Clinton probably starts out ahead in every contest but one (Illinois). I don’t doubt that Obama has the political skills to close the gap, but as Corn notes, he won’t be able to do it his way — by letting voters look him in the eye and hear what he has to say.
And at that point, it’s a race of commercials, which is why a lot of Feb. 5 voters will be seeing spots like this one:
Will it be enough? Stay tuned.