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fpbI think it is not arguable that the media, not only in America but across the world, are very favourable to Senator Obama. I am beginning to wonder whether this really does him any good - in fact, if I were him, I would actually ask for less reverential coverage.
It is not only a matter of the reaction of opponents. Republicans expect it. By this time, the partisanship of the press and TV networks has gone past being a Republican talking point and become a joke. No Republican alive expects anything other than open or disguised hostility from the New York and Los Angeles Times or from CNN or ABC. Certainly, when such things come they rub salt into open wounds, remind many Republicans where their real opponents are, and strengthen a corporate spirit that depends in some parts from feeling persecuted. But these things are expected, and I imagine that both Obama and his supporters in the media discount them.
What they should consider is the effect they will have on the half of the Democratic Party that voted for Hillary Clinton. At the time when Hillary declared her campaign closed, I visited her website to see how her people felt about it. I have never seen anything like it, not in eight years online. It was, to begin with, the most enormous comments thread I ever saw - hundreds, maybe thousands - I lost count after a while - of people, practically all women, screaming their views online. And they were literally all of one mind. Now you know that that is something that practically never happens on the net. However much agreement there may be on a thread, sooner or later some contrary person appears and makes him/herself felt. It may be trolling, it may be sheer contrarianism, or it may be a principled objection to the views expressed; but a large comments thread never, in my experience, goes by without some contradiction. Not this one, though. Hundreds upon hundreds of response, all of one mind, indeed all of one tone: rage, loathing for Obama's people (a frequent topic was the quality of supporter that Obama drew, with horror stories of assault, sexism, car keyings, threats, insults, campaign materials destroyed, fraudulent behaviour), absolute refusal to do anything for him. The word that summed up the mood of thousands of Hillary supporters was: "NEVER!"
The inter-Democrat fight has been more divisive at the ground level, at the level of individual party supporters, than either the candidates or the media realized. This story took place too low for the media radar to pick it: the hatred between Obama and Clinton activists was about events too small, too local, perhaps too petty, for Washington DC journalists, concerned with debates and large-scale polls, to notice. But it happened. Hillary's supporters already carried a considerable sense of aggravation. As one of them said in an article I read somewhere, "Don't you know how it always happens, ladies? You spent most of your adult life working. You are at the heart of your office. You have made yourself the most competent person there. You confidently expect, and everyone agrees you deserve, promotion. And then in comes the handsome young Harvard graduate with his nice tie and his nice jacket, tall and neat with a 32-teeth smile, and charms the boss and gets your job. And everyone tells you that you have to grin and bear it - for the good of the company." Well grounded or not, this is a common enough feeling among professional women to resonate with hundreds of thousands of them. Every pro-Obama article in every newspaper in the country, however well grounded its reasoning, sounded to them exactly like those office whispers - "for the good of the company", for the good of the party. That is why hundreds of thousands of Hillary supporters completely shut their minds to the coming defeat, to the obvious mistakes of their candidate, to any evidence of fact. They had already placed the media, like Republicans, in the enemy camp, and simply did not believe them.
To this you have to add the culture-clash element. The average Hillary supporter, especially their female core, is older and more poised than the average Obama activist. They are women who have spent maybe twenty years working in office or business environment, learning, if they did not already have them, manners and a certain kind of calming routine in dealing with colleagues and competitors. Work environments cannot and do not cope with screaming matches and aggressive certainty of any sort. The kind of attitude that seems natural to the Kos Kidz, simple assurance that they are in the right and that they are the generation that will change the world - and therefore what they do is right and whoever opposes them needs to be steamrollered for the good of the planet - are, to them, incomprehensible and repulsive. Personal encounters have often been, not only bruising, but disgusting to them on a deeply personal level. They have felt treated, not as possible colleagues, but as scum. There is a sense of personal as well as group abuse there which is hard enough to make a man forget, let alone a woman. Mind you: I do not say that the Hillary supporters are guiltless and that Obamans do not have anything on their own side to complain about. What I am trying to set out is a purely subjective attitude that is widespread among the supporters of the losing candidate, and that stands like a wall between them and any effort to recruit them for the victor's next campaign.
And that being the case, I feel that many Hillary supporters, especially the core, the activists and party members, will be, if anything, further infuriated by the constant and uncritical pro-Obama tone of the media. The world the media describe will simply not be the one they experienced. Their grievance, far from being appeased, will be further hardened. And on election day, they may well decide to take their vengeance.
It is not only a matter of the reaction of opponents. Republicans expect it. By this time, the partisanship of the press and TV networks has gone past being a Republican talking point and become a joke. No Republican alive expects anything other than open or disguised hostility from the New York and Los Angeles Times or from CNN or ABC. Certainly, when such things come they rub salt into open wounds, remind many Republicans where their real opponents are, and strengthen a corporate spirit that depends in some parts from feeling persecuted. But these things are expected, and I imagine that both Obama and his supporters in the media discount them.
What they should consider is the effect they will have on the half of the Democratic Party that voted for Hillary Clinton. At the time when Hillary declared her campaign closed, I visited her website to see how her people felt about it. I have never seen anything like it, not in eight years online. It was, to begin with, the most enormous comments thread I ever saw - hundreds, maybe thousands - I lost count after a while - of people, practically all women, screaming their views online. And they were literally all of one mind. Now you know that that is something that practically never happens on the net. However much agreement there may be on a thread, sooner or later some contrary person appears and makes him/herself felt. It may be trolling, it may be sheer contrarianism, or it may be a principled objection to the views expressed; but a large comments thread never, in my experience, goes by without some contradiction. Not this one, though. Hundreds upon hundreds of response, all of one mind, indeed all of one tone: rage, loathing for Obama's people (a frequent topic was the quality of supporter that Obama drew, with horror stories of assault, sexism, car keyings, threats, insults, campaign materials destroyed, fraudulent behaviour), absolute refusal to do anything for him. The word that summed up the mood of thousands of Hillary supporters was: "NEVER!"
The inter-Democrat fight has been more divisive at the ground level, at the level of individual party supporters, than either the candidates or the media realized. This story took place too low for the media radar to pick it: the hatred between Obama and Clinton activists was about events too small, too local, perhaps too petty, for Washington DC journalists, concerned with debates and large-scale polls, to notice. But it happened. Hillary's supporters already carried a considerable sense of aggravation. As one of them said in an article I read somewhere, "Don't you know how it always happens, ladies? You spent most of your adult life working. You are at the heart of your office. You have made yourself the most competent person there. You confidently expect, and everyone agrees you deserve, promotion. And then in comes the handsome young Harvard graduate with his nice tie and his nice jacket, tall and neat with a 32-teeth smile, and charms the boss and gets your job. And everyone tells you that you have to grin and bear it - for the good of the company." Well grounded or not, this is a common enough feeling among professional women to resonate with hundreds of thousands of them. Every pro-Obama article in every newspaper in the country, however well grounded its reasoning, sounded to them exactly like those office whispers - "for the good of the company", for the good of the party. That is why hundreds of thousands of Hillary supporters completely shut their minds to the coming defeat, to the obvious mistakes of their candidate, to any evidence of fact. They had already placed the media, like Republicans, in the enemy camp, and simply did not believe them.
To this you have to add the culture-clash element. The average Hillary supporter, especially their female core, is older and more poised than the average Obama activist. They are women who have spent maybe twenty years working in office or business environment, learning, if they did not already have them, manners and a certain kind of calming routine in dealing with colleagues and competitors. Work environments cannot and do not cope with screaming matches and aggressive certainty of any sort. The kind of attitude that seems natural to the Kos Kidz, simple assurance that they are in the right and that they are the generation that will change the world - and therefore what they do is right and whoever opposes them needs to be steamrollered for the good of the planet - are, to them, incomprehensible and repulsive. Personal encounters have often been, not only bruising, but disgusting to them on a deeply personal level. They have felt treated, not as possible colleagues, but as scum. There is a sense of personal as well as group abuse there which is hard enough to make a man forget, let alone a woman. Mind you: I do not say that the Hillary supporters are guiltless and that Obamans do not have anything on their own side to complain about. What I am trying to set out is a purely subjective attitude that is widespread among the supporters of the losing candidate, and that stands like a wall between them and any effort to recruit them for the victor's next campaign.
And that being the case, I feel that many Hillary supporters, especially the core, the activists and party members, will be, if anything, further infuriated by the constant and uncritical pro-Obama tone of the media. The world the media describe will simply not be the one they experienced. Their grievance, far from being appeased, will be further hardened. And on election day, they may well decide to take their vengeance.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-26 09:38 am (UTC)When you elect a leader, you don't just get one person - you get an entire political machine, the vast majority of which you never see. Although the electorate can't judge the machine, it can influence it, as the machine desperately wants to remain in power. And the way to do that is to be willing to jump ship if you are ignored.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-26 07:12 pm (UTC)"And the way to do that is to be willing to jump ship if you are ignored."
This I really don't agree with. The average woman who supported Hillary Clinton cares about certain issues in particular. Let's use health care as an example. There is not too much difference between the positions espoused by Clinton and the positions espoused by Barack Obama on this issue. John McCain's position would probably not be agreeable to the supporter of Clinton. So if Clinton's supporter voted for McCain, or did not vote at all, than she would be voting against her own interest. And what would be the purpose of this? To punish Barack Obama for running for President? He certainly had the right to do so. To punish his supporters for supporting him instead of Hillary? And how is Barack Obama ignoring this particular constituency anyway? It would be as if I, an Obama supporter, had decided to vote for McCain if Clinton had won the candidacy. What good would it do me? All I would get out of it is a crappy President I never wanted in the first place.
All that being said, everybody's vote is their own, to do with as they see best.