I have not blogged in a while. Mostly because I think it may be a waste of time, particularly when blogging about matters political. The web hullabaloo in politics is all very interesting, but will ultimately be of little effect, at least for 2004. I still think that too few people look to the web for political information and that political parties will still have to rely on ad campaigns for name recognition and precinct captains to get out the vote in November. The California recall is an excellent example of what I am talking about. Despite gigabytes of information against him on the web, Arnold won easily. He did not need a big get out the vote push or even lots of television advertising. That had already been done during his 20+ year acting career.
I have been working on the Kerry campaign and 2 congressional campaigns for several months now and have been watching all of the polls and internet news pages on all of the candidates. I am convinced that the person who wins the presidency in 2004 will have a big organization on the ground in each state and lots of television ads. This is because most people vote with 3 factors in mind: name recognition, fear and gossip.
Name recognition matters most. I have been out canvassing collecting petition signatures and have noticed that people are more apt to sign a petition or accept campaign literature when they have previously heard the candidate's name. It really does not matter what they have heard, just that they have heard something. This was proven not long ago in Illinois when a Libertarian candidate won simply because he had run so many times, people felt that they knew who he was.
The fear aspect of the voting decision takes on many forms. In 1956, people voted for Eisenhower because he said he would bring the boys home from Korea. Every mother with a teenage son went out and voted for him, even those who voted exclusively for Democrats both before 1956 and after. They were afraid for their children. Another aspect of fear is racial. I hate to say it, but I think people really vote with a mind toward race when their racial status quo or comfort level is threatened. The new fear that is being exploited is terrorism. I have a strange feeling that after he was sure his own skin was safe, Bush danced with glee over September 11, 2001. It very well might bring him an undeserved second term.
Bush is already using fear in his 2004 campaign. His first ads in Iowa and New Hampshire are clearly intended to use fear of terrorism to first, keep the Democratic Party candidates' attacks against the Iraq war in check and second, to promote the idea that the war somehow has a positive effect on terrorism reduction among the general population. It is a simple message that goes to the heart of a major voting factor. Also, because participation in the war has been limited to volunteers, Bush is not yet at risk of losing under the previously described Eisenhower factor. That is why he is so against the draft. The war had better begin to go well for him, however. If a draft becomes necessary, his strategy is down the drain.
There is a smaller fear that also affects elections and that is the fear of looking bad in front of the neighbors. That helps candidates with large organizations on the ground who can get people to go door to door and make their neighbors feel like they may look stupid if they do not go out and vote. That is the good old fashioned precinct captain type of a campaign which I think still works and works better than the cold communication of the Internet where there is no one to give a person that disapproving look if he fails to go out and vote.
That brings me to the third voting factor, gossip. That is what lost Congress in 1996 and helped lose for Gore in 2000. (Ok, he did not lose, but he did not win by enough to make a difference, now did he.) People now, as in generation after generation since the beginning of time, love a good scandal. Only now, that love of gossip has a greater chance of negatively affecting the political process because the mass media can turn a little infidelity into the story of the century. Most people are not paying attention to the world much less the 2004 campaign. They most likely thought that the big news of last week was the Michael Jackson arrest, not the protests of Bush's trip to London or the bombings in Istanbul. More people were concerned that Rupert was voted off the island in Survivor this week and there that there are only umpteen episodes of 'Friends' left than care about Kerry's rally in Iowa or Dean's plea to Native Americans.
In the late 1990s, the republicans were easily able to turn around their 1992 defeat into victory over the Clinton sex scandals. Gore was too afraid of Clinton's gossip factor to take his help in the 2000 election which probably proved to be a huge mistake on his part, but the fear was there and legitimate. Bush trounced McCain after McCain's early lead in the 2000 republican primaries by spreading all kinds of ridiculous lies about McCain in push polling. There Bush combined gossip with fear as several of the lies about McCain had to do with McCain's supposed fathering of racially mixed children.
ultimately, the 2004 election will be determined by name recognition, fear and gossip. To the extent that the Internet creates any of them, it will affect the election, but to the extent that it is too cold, impersonal and far away, it is still limited as a political force.
I have been working on the Kerry campaign and 2 congressional campaigns for several months now and have been watching all of the polls and internet news pages on all of the candidates. I am convinced that the person who wins the presidency in 2004 will have a big organization on the ground in each state and lots of television ads. This is because most people vote with 3 factors in mind: name recognition, fear and gossip.
Name recognition matters most. I have been out canvassing collecting petition signatures and have noticed that people are more apt to sign a petition or accept campaign literature when they have previously heard the candidate's name. It really does not matter what they have heard, just that they have heard something. This was proven not long ago in Illinois when a Libertarian candidate won simply because he had run so many times, people felt that they knew who he was.
The fear aspect of the voting decision takes on many forms. In 1956, people voted for Eisenhower because he said he would bring the boys home from Korea. Every mother with a teenage son went out and voted for him, even those who voted exclusively for Democrats both before 1956 and after. They were afraid for their children. Another aspect of fear is racial. I hate to say it, but I think people really vote with a mind toward race when their racial status quo or comfort level is threatened. The new fear that is being exploited is terrorism. I have a strange feeling that after he was sure his own skin was safe, Bush danced with glee over September 11, 2001. It very well might bring him an undeserved second term.
Bush is already using fear in his 2004 campaign. His first ads in Iowa and New Hampshire are clearly intended to use fear of terrorism to first, keep the Democratic Party candidates' attacks against the Iraq war in check and second, to promote the idea that the war somehow has a positive effect on terrorism reduction among the general population. It is a simple message that goes to the heart of a major voting factor. Also, because participation in the war has been limited to volunteers, Bush is not yet at risk of losing under the previously described Eisenhower factor. That is why he is so against the draft. The war had better begin to go well for him, however. If a draft becomes necessary, his strategy is down the drain.
There is a smaller fear that also affects elections and that is the fear of looking bad in front of the neighbors. That helps candidates with large organizations on the ground who can get people to go door to door and make their neighbors feel like they may look stupid if they do not go out and vote. That is the good old fashioned precinct captain type of a campaign which I think still works and works better than the cold communication of the Internet where there is no one to give a person that disapproving look if he fails to go out and vote.
That brings me to the third voting factor, gossip. That is what lost Congress in 1996 and helped lose for Gore in 2000. (Ok, he did not lose, but he did not win by enough to make a difference, now did he.) People now, as in generation after generation since the beginning of time, love a good scandal. Only now, that love of gossip has a greater chance of negatively affecting the political process because the mass media can turn a little infidelity into the story of the century. Most people are not paying attention to the world much less the 2004 campaign. They most likely thought that the big news of last week was the Michael Jackson arrest, not the protests of Bush's trip to London or the bombings in Istanbul. More people were concerned that Rupert was voted off the island in Survivor this week and there that there are only umpteen episodes of 'Friends' left than care about Kerry's rally in Iowa or Dean's plea to Native Americans.
In the late 1990s, the republicans were easily able to turn around their 1992 defeat into victory over the Clinton sex scandals. Gore was too afraid of Clinton's gossip factor to take his help in the 2000 election which probably proved to be a huge mistake on his part, but the fear was there and legitimate. Bush trounced McCain after McCain's early lead in the 2000 republican primaries by spreading all kinds of ridiculous lies about McCain in push polling. There Bush combined gossip with fear as several of the lies about McCain had to do with McCain's supposed fathering of racially mixed children.
ultimately, the 2004 election will be determined by name recognition, fear and gossip. To the extent that the Internet creates any of them, it will affect the election, but to the extent that it is too cold, impersonal and far away, it is still limited as a political force.
posted by Ellen Beth at
11/22/2003 01:31:00 PM
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