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Home > Blogs > Campaigns Don't Count > Archives > 2008 > January > 14 > Entry
Balz: Campaign Counted. Of course
What’s that phrase? “Teachable moment”?
When a certain 16-year-old star of a wholesome television program turned up pregnant a few weeks ago, pundits talked about this being perhaps a “teachable moment.” Other pundits disagreed, because, after all, undoing the harm of pundits is the main thing pundits do.
If ever there was a teaching moment on the workings of American politics, it was New Hampshire and the humiliating landslide defeat, not only of the pundits, but of the entire political community, which was, after all, of one mind about how things were going there. But if any pundit were to actually suggest that NH might turn out to be a teachable moment, some other pundit should shoot him down. No teaching ever occurs. No important questions are even considered open.
More has been said and written on NH than one could shake a stick at. But a blog titled “Campaigns Don’t Count” simply has to take up what the Washington’s Post Don Balz said.
“Hilliary Clinton’s stunning victory here on Tuesday night was another powerful reminder of something that is taught in Politics 101: Campaigns matter.
“In the five days between Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton ran a campaign. Barack Obama rode a wave. Everyone — myself included — believed the wave would not crest before Tuesday’s balloting. Clinton, determined as ever, set out to do something to stop it.” http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/09/whycampaignsmatter.html/
Balz goes on to point out all the things Clinton did right. His interpretation is becoming the official one of the media establishment. A headline on the news pages of the New York Times on Thursday said, “Message of Experience, and a Wet-Eye Moment, Won the Primary Day.”
But it is worth remembering that we are talking about the same media establishment that was certain Hillary was blowing it in New Hamsphire, that she was directionless, that her crowds were smaller than Obama’s, that she was losing them, that Bill wasn’t helping.
Now Balz and others have decided all that was simply wrong.
That decision reflects an assumption that campaign events MUST be what’s affecting things. If the election outcome doesn’t live up to the prevailing interpretation of campaign events, then the interpretation must be changed.
But this must be understood: Balz’s livelihood does not depend on whether people think Obama or Clinton ran a better campaign. It DOES depend on them believing that campaigns matter. His insistence that campaigns matter ought to be accompanied by a disclaimer stating that he has an obvious stake in the issue. (Unfortunately, however, nobody in the media establishment even believes there IS an issue. Everybody makes the same assumption Balz does.)
Ultimately, there is only one question about NH: Why were the polls so misleading? True, the crowds were misleading, too, and maybe the campaigners’ performances were. But it all comes back to polls. Without them, the journalists and others would be been far, far more careful.
I don’t believe the polls were simply “wrong,” in the sense of misreporting public opinion. Sometimes individual polls are wrong in that sense, but not all of them, not by so much.
But the old saw is true: Polls are snapshots. And the faster things are changing, the less useful a snapshot is.
So the issue becomes, why was public opinion changing so quickly? I think I know why, but I don’t think I can convince anybody.
The arrival of an election has a particular effect: It causes people to focus who haven’t really focused before. We often seen changes in public opinion at the last minute. These changes are often thought to reflect events going on in the campaign, but are really just a matter of some voters finally focusing (on the choice at hand, not necessarily on the campaign).
After 2004, John Kerry attributed his loss to the fact that Osama bin Laden put out a video just before the election. Kerry said everything was fine with his numbers until then. But, in fact, some of us had flatly predicted Kerry’s loss in January, and repeatedly thereafter, without having a clue what bin Laden would do, and without caring.
In both 1968 and 1976, presidential nominees who came out of their conventions way behind in the polls closed the gap almost entirely, especially in the last week or so, but fell short. (Hubert Humphrey and Gerald Ford.) Both times, many observers said, “If only the election had been scheduled for a week later….”
Wrong. The sudden changes as the election approached reflected the fact that the election was approaching. If the elections had come a week later, the changes would have come a week later, and the same people would have won.
What happened in NH was that the election approached just as Obama’s post-Iowa bump was happening. A lot of people who had been intending to vote for Clinton all along got caught up in the Obama phenomenon, but came to their senses, so to speak, very quickly, because the election was upon them very quickly, and they simply had to decide. If the election had been scheduled for two weeks later, the polls would have changed more slowly, but would have ended up at the same place.
It’s just a theory, of course. But it’s every bit as respectable as a theory based upon inconsistent, microscopic, self-serving interpretation of campaign events. And yet it can’t even get heard.
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