For about a year, I accepted the conventional wisdom and agreed with Terry McAuliffe about the benefits of a front-loaded nominating process. Let’s get our nominee figured out early on, so he or she won’t have to spend lots of money while getting hammered by other Dems. The sooner we can go mano-y-mano with Bush, the better.
But lately, I’ve been wondering if the conventional wisdom is backwards.
Hesiod has been talking about this for a while at Counterspin Central, and I have to admit, I’m beginning to find his take persuasive. (Atrios and Digby appear to agree with him, too.)
As Hesiod explained the other day, if no Dem candidate takes a commanding lead before Boston, it “virtually guarantees that the Democratic convention, unlike the GOP propaganda-fest in New York, will get wall to wall media coverage 24/7.” He added, “It will also get a ton of attention from the VOTERS, which is even more important. And when the nominee is finally selected, he…will get a tremendous send-off, and will have a unified Democratic party behind them.”
This is starting to make sense. It’s similar to my take on having so many candidates in the field at the same time — it makes for really awful debates, but it reinforces public attention on the weaknesses of Bush’s agenda when you have seven (or, at one point, ten) presidential candidates criss-crossing the nation to remind everyone of his failures.
Captivating public attention on Democratic candidates and the differences between them could help the party immeasurably, especially if the candidates play relatively nice and keep the focus on Bush’s weaknesses and their respective abilities as leaders. (With that in mind, it probably would do more harm than good to have Howard Dean in the mix, insisting that “Washington Democrats” are a scourge on society, Clark is a closet Republican, Kerry lacks the judgment to lead, etc.)
In fact, Hesiod was looking at this in the perspective of a brokered convention. I’m not sure that’s entirely necessary, though that would be a public relations bonanza, at least in terms of TV ratings. Instead, we win the longer the process goes on.
Let’s say the nominee is going to be Kerry (this is just a hypothetical, calm down). Let’s also say he pretty much sweeps the Feb. 3 states and has the whole nomination locked down by Super Tuesday in early March.
Under the McAuliffe plan, everything is good in the world. It’s a boring outcome, but that’s what we supposedly want at this point. No more intra-party bickering, no more negative advertising, no more debates that no one wants to watch, etc. Kerry’s the guy and it’s time to start planning the general election strategy.
That has some pluses, but more than a few drawbacks. Once Karl Rove knows it’s Kerry, the GOP has over seven months to go hogwild, tarring Kerry as the anti-Christ. Sure, Kerry gets to return fire, but it still leaves our guy out there with a bull’s eye on his chest. It also leaves plenty of time for the public to tire of our nominee.
Or, consider the other alternative. Kerry, Clark, Edwards, and Dean split primary victories for the next couple of months. Rove has dossiers loaded with attacks for each, but he doesn’t know who to focus attention on quite yet. Our “Final Four” continue to travel the nation, bashing Bush and promoting Democratic ideas to large audiences, in the media, etc. All the while, the public spotlight shines directly on the Dem party because we’re the ones making news. Whether or not this lasts through late July (when the convention is held) is unimportant. The point is, the longer, the better.
The only significant flaw I can think of is financial. A long primary fight would mean the Final Four would be spending a lot of money to win the nomination. And every penny the ultimate nominee has to spend against his Dem rivals is a penny he can’t spend to beat Bush, who, by the way, will have more money than any candidate in the history of elections in this country or any other.
Disconcerting though this may be, I think this may be the only major flaw in an otherwise appealing scenario. Besides, money isn’t everything — the GOP had more money than us the last three presidential elections, but on Election Day, our guy had more votes than their guy in all three.