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in Iowa and New Hampshire, and media control over the whole process.
Candidates have to go to Iowa and NH and hang out and meet people and so on, and that's great; however the reality is that campaigns are decided by news coverage, even in Iowa and New Hampshire, and so all that meeting and greeting turns out to be nothing more than a ticket punching affair. If campaigns are going to be decided by broadcast media, which they are now almost exclusively, then play-acting about chili feeds and pancake breakfasts and the like is simply a waste of time and money (except to the extent that the candidates get TV air time from it), and also has the potential to nominate a crappy candidate. Kerry and Dean are both essentially local boys in New Hampshire, but their 'strong' finishes there are trumpeted by the media anyway, so you have two leading candidates from an area, New England, who have no native appeal in the South, when it is crucial that this party has someone who can at least threaten to compete in the South.
The second issue is that the media have far too much control over the whole process. I do phone work for my candidate locally, and the number of people I talk to over the phone who say things like, 'I was for Dean, but now I'm liking Kerry more and more' is frightening: Dean used to get all the positive attention, while Kerry was described as an inept bumbler; Now it's Kerry and Edwards who get the attention, and they're also the ones who people end up 'liking.' When I drill down on them, I almost invariably discover that the only source of 'news' these folks rely on is TV, so whoever the hot candidate is at the moment, whoever is getting the coverage, is who they are for. I used to sell for a living, and I was good at it, and now I manage and train people who sell for a living, and I'm good at that: I know how to persuade people. But there's nothing I can say or do that has anywhere near the impact on these people as what they hear Peter Jennings or some other talking head say. They are TV zombies. So the smart candidate should run their campaign with both eyes on the media, not the public (I believe Clinton has said this as well) -- which leads to a perversion of democracy, as the media shape the candidates and their message to suit their own needs and perceptions.
The real tragedy of this year's primary is not that the third-most electable candidate is likely to be the nominee; it's that the tremendous enthusiasm and passion thet coalesced around the Dean campaign was wasted on Dean, someone who never had a clear picture of what to do besides wring money from his followers. The Dean campaign really could have represented a shift in the electoral system, using the internet to bypass and control the media as a means of reaching the public with a relatively unfiltered message, but it's too late now, and without an overhaul of the primary system, we're going to continue seeing problems pop up. I'm a black, transplanted Californian living in Arizona who doesn't watch TV. Yet I have my candidates chosen for me by white couch potatoes living in the midwest and northeast, who get their news almost entirely from 30 minute evening news shows. Somehow it doesn't seem right, especially when you consider the quality of the people who have come forward as the frontrunners in the race. To be sure, every primary doesn;t turn out like this, but the system needs improvement.
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