The Gore-Leaf Clover that I Overlooked Be-Gore

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

I found Ezra's Gore article fascinating, but I ended up somewhat bearish on his Presidential ambitions  (Gore's, that is; Ezra, when you're ready to become the First Jewish President, let me know if you need a field director or a pollster). That is, I'm not entirely sure he's running for President. The first reason is that upon assuming the Presidency, if not during the campaign, he would be forced by political pressure to end his work with Current TV and other media enterprises. The main reason, though, is same reason I think some of Ezra's latest comments land off the mark:

No longer. Dean -- unlike Bill Bradley, or John McCain, or Gary Hart -- did not win any of the early primaries. He lost them. What was unique about his insurgency is that he went from darkest, quietest horse to frontrunner in a matter of months, without winning a single state. He did it through direct communication with the small core of party activists who can singlehandedly make a candidacy. And they made his, until poor ads, some major gaffes, and an overly-mational focus lost him Iowa. But in 2008, that core will enlarge, and the media will be watching them closely. Win them over, and you might well win the nomination.

First of all, Bradley didn't win any primaries. He gave Gore a scare in New Hampshire, but exit polls showed Bradley winning wealthy Democrats and young Democrats, while Gore carried the stolid working class demographics that he rode to victory in states that have fewer "yippies". Political observers knew it was all over after New Hampshire. (Similary, Paul Tsongas's pyrrhic victory in New Hampshire follows similar trends, though Clinton had to dig himelf out of a much bigger hole).

Second, the proof seems to be in the pudding. As Ezra concedes, every candidate who seeks to excite the activist base ends up losing primaries. Hart's campaign came the closest to winning, but we need to remember that it was Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas who sought the yuppie/yippie vote in 1992. The Trippi/Dean/Klein theory of Presidential campaigns suggests that the Internet allows candidates to get their message to activists at a blindingly fast pace, creating a giant network to influence the main news narratives of the day. But why should Gore have an advantage heredel? In 2008, unlike Dean in '04, Gore would have to compete for activists' bandwidth (literally) with Edwards, Feingold, Clark, and others, each with their own internet loyalists. And social stratification means that heavy internet users -- who have more formal education, higher incomes, and are more likely to be urban and single -- won't spend that much time talking about politics working class voters with a high school or maybe a two-year college degree. So I just don't see MoveOn and similar "viral marketing" techniques being able to "infect" the entire nation.

Coincidentally, Ezra's article is up for debate on the same day that Mark Penn writes an op-ed in the Washington Post on the continued importance of swing voters. Penn -- who was Clinton's pollster in 1996 and is currently Hillary's pollster -- points out that these voters are the anti-activists: "[t]he two or three or 10 voters who are the quietest in focus groups, who never demonstrate and who belong to no political party ...". But that doesn't make their votes less important on election day. So while I love Gore's attempts to create a more community driven media environment, and his challenge to the notion that objectivity the holy grail of professional journalism, I don't think it's the start of his Presidential campaign.