The Media Giveth, The Voters Taketh Away
Daniel Henninger at the newly revamped Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal (it isn't a separate website any longer) has an even more simple explanation for why the New Hampshire primary turned out the exact opposite as the media had it picked. The media screwed up.
But as to the media's coronation of Barack Obama after Iowa, what's to explain? They jumped over the moon for Barack. End of story.
All that said, taking potshots at the media herd as it "pivots" this way and that across the political plain is easy sport. The truth is that all of us are feeling and stumbling our way through the altered mental states being imposed on us by the Internet.
The one real thing that happened in the Iowa Democratic caucus is that Sen. Obama beat Sen. Clinton by eight points and by one delegate. A big deal for sure. There was a time that it would be reported as a big deal by the nation's print newspapers and several TV networks, after which intrigued voters would go back to their day jobs until New Hampshire.
Not now. An event that was once only big now gets air blown into it round the clock with electronic hot-air torches. While the media pumped the Iowa story to a colossal size, voters checked the Web to learn that the new Barack balloon was still expanding in the sky. Then people start exchanging emails. Have you seen this?? He's up by 12!!! By Monday, Mr. Obama had grown into a benevolent Godzilla, sweeping the entire Clinton village into the sea. All this after Iowa.
Should the media somehow do it differently? Who knows? Everyone has to file reports all the time, and the "everyone" now is simply a torrent of reporters, commentators, bloggers and comments on blogs. Buried amid all this you can indeed find it written that Iowa is an anomalous state with a weird caucus system. But no one is going to put this disclaimer in italics above everything they write or say about Iowa. Absent that ballast, however, the outsized weight given to the Obama victory bends reality. It turns the campaign into a video game.
That is probably one of the more astute, succinct analyses put out to date. Call it Pac-Man politics. Henninger thinks that the voters, inundated by media blather about the new winner-to-be did what people do when they feel pressured: the pushed back. He predicts that the new, urgent 24/7 news instant analysis fever will actually bring in more of that push back. The media can deliver all the "wisdom" they want - the voters will choose whether to pay attention. And, people being people, they may decide to turn that delivered wisdom right onto its proverbial ear.
By NortonPete, Saturday, 12 January , 2008 @ 7:11 am
On Fox and CNN
Hew Hampshire will do a recount with Kucinich paying for it.
Kucinich alluded to online reports alleging disparities around the state between hand-counted ballots, which tended to favor Sen. Barack Obama, and machine-counted ones that tended to favor Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
This should be interesting. The recount will start Jan16 with the results in time for super Tuesday. If there is a change of even 1%, I predict things on the Democrat side to get even nastier.