Notes from the Candidate Graveyard
Over the past week or so, I’ve combed through and analyzed 247 TV news stories about the ‘08 campaign from Dec. 26 to Super Tuesday (still have more to go!). While there has been much that’s been striking about what I’ve actually found once I started to crunch numbers, not all that much of it has been too terribly surprising.
One thing that I do find interesting though is how quickly coverage of only two months ago becomes a candidate graveyard. You’ve got Rudy Giuliani, front-runner, but oh-he-might-be-in-trouble, wait-now-he’s-outtie. Edwards, Thompson, Huckabee, Romney, not to mention the ones that never got covered in the first place, Richardson, Dodd, Biden, Paul, Kucinich.
And now we’re down to three (I guess, folks are saying that Ron Paul web message was a dropping out…?), four if you want to throw Ralph in there. And this observation struck me, because it seems to me that some thinking Dems are probably seeing this story in the Times today and thinking its about time we dig another grave. (”Democrats … say the D.N.C. is hamstrung by its inability to raise money in any serious way without a presidential nominee to rally around.”)
All in all, I’m just kvetching here … I’m not liking how early and immediately these things just have to get settled. It all seems to be a function of “the billion-dollar president” — if no one was concerned about raising assloads of $crilla for the next 7 or 8 months, why else would we have to narrow the field so immediately and thus subject ourselves to the most absolutely meaningless part of the campaign?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: election08, FAIR, freelance work
I second your kvetch: this primary season (mostly, but not entirely, on the dem side) has provided an opportunity for substantive, nuanced debate on real issues. Of course this opportunity has been largely ignored, but we can complain about that while still getting excited about the real progress being made. It starts to feel like the candidates are real people as opposed to poster children for tba party platforms. Bring on Pennsylvania! Take some more risks, Hillary! Take at least one risk, Barack!
And there’s plenty to be pissed about with respect to media coverage of this primary season.
I think Howard Zinn mostly has it right when he says we should all chill out a bit re election madness. (http://www.progressive.org/mag_zinn0308; see also South Park episode “Douche and Turd”
However, since reality is never all we think it could be, let’s not go around making the perfect the enemy of the good. If this election isn’t a fluke, then things are actually improving. That’s cause for celebration.
Thanks for linking to that Zinn piece; it was right on the money, and a timely message, a nice step back.
When you say “if this election isn’t a fluke, then things are actually improving,” what do you mean exactly? Not saying I disagree, just want to know *which parts* you think are improving…