| This will be the first in a series of posts over the next few days about my trip to Iowa last weekend.
A trip to Des Moines, especially when it's the Harkin Steak Fry weekend, is a good reality check about the way people make their decisions about politics. Sometimes those of us in national politics are so focused on the candidates' issue positions that we forget that politics is at least as much about things like instinct and passion and charm and fun and eloquence and… well, that indescribable gut feeling people get about candidates.
Take the residual troops issue, a big issue for the OpenLeft.com community. Richardson and lately Edwards, have tried to emphasize their differences between their position and that of Obama and Clinton, but in spite of the overwhelming intensity of all the folks I talked to in terms of their opposition to the war, that issue hasn't gotten through at all. It's going to take a huge effort by Richardson and/or Edwards to make that one sink in, and even then, it's unclear to me whether it overcomes many other factors.
I asked every single person I knew, and quite a few I didn't, why they were supporting the person they were supporting (assuming they had decided on somebody- still quite a bunch of people who haven't, even among the activists at the Steak Fry). Not very many of the answers I got related to where they stood on the issues. People talked about who they trusted the most, who they thought was the most passionate, who they thought had the best experience, who they thought cared the most about regular people, who they thought had the best chance in the general, how smart they were. Many of Hillary's supporters were thrilled at the idea of a woman being President, and a lot of Obama and Richardson supporters mentioned their candidate's background and race as really positive reasons to be for them.
I don't think this is because Iowa activists don't care about the issues- quite the contrary. The people I know in Iowa care very passionately about progressive issues. But the candidates themselves have blurred distinctions on the issues so much that issue differences have receded.
Honestly, if you were given the text of each candidate's speech at the Steak Fry, and just looked at the sections where they discussed the issues, even extremely well-informed people would have trouble figuring out who gave what speech. They all say they want us out of Iraq ASAP. They all want universal health care and think insurance and drug companies have too much power. They all say they are pro-union and want better wages and working conditions. They are all pro-choice, etc. etc. etc. It all sounds the same on the issues. And as Chris Bowers has pointed out here, they are really pretty much the same in most areas. If a candidate wants to break out on some major issue distinction, it's going to take a major lift- a really serious and sustained campaign strategy- to do so.
Given the candidates' own tendencies- highly evident in their speeches on Sunday- to highlight the more personal and background distinctions rather than the issue differences, I would be surprised if this race is decided on the basis of issue differences between the candidates. |
