Feb 13 2008
Political thoughts
(which as usual, are my personal opinion and do not reflect anything at all on any other organization etc etc etc and it’s not even very well researched, hence, opinion.)
I’ve been continuing to follow the primaries, particularly the Democrat’s side of things, and I was thinking this way:
I recall coverage in the recent past of Howard Dean as the DNC chair working on grassroots organization in those traditionally non-Democrat states - rebuilding the base, as it were, rather than giving up certain places as lost and focusing on the big guns or the low-hanging liberal fruit (can you imagine what low-hanging liberal fruit is? prolly something gross).
I think Obama follows more closely to this trend - he seems to focus on all the states, which, as a person who has lived in desperately conservative areas, would really hearten me if I were indeed still there. It kind of feels like Clinton’s strategy is more the old-school method - drop the contests where you’re a lost cause and focus on the big ones. That may win the race, but it sure isn’t helping build up a coalition (which, I guess you could say, the US isn’t hot at in the first place) or even a broad base of support. My thought train derails when you think about the fact that more working-class/middle-class people seem to favor Clinton, as then Obama’s campaign could be seen as a unifying of more elite populations across the country. As there are more working-class/middle-class people out there than elites that seems like numbers-wise more people would generally back Clinton - assuming that the population voting is representative of their socioeconomic/cultural background - which in statistics/sampling land would be hair-pullingly untrue.
So who, in the end, is really unifying more? And who, in the end, has more people in theory supporting them? I guess that’s why we have primaries (or caucuses). I think someone supported by the working/middle class is more appropriate - after all, there are more of em out in our world, and maybe that would lend itself more naturally to humanistic policymaking - but again, I guess you’re assuming that this is indicated by voting, and that people vote in favor of their interests rather than on wedge issues.
That being said, woo relative lack of wedge issues!
Oh wait, I tend to not like people as a group. Bah. If only this whole education/community service stuff was appropriately revolutionized…
Wouldn’t it be fun if our proportional representation was by socioeconomic level? Heads would *explode*.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am
You know, I was just thinking about this the other day, especially given this whole “I’m winning the big states” speech by Clinton… I personally think it’s better to win more states than big states, and I think Obama’s proving that with his current delegate lead. Then again, the Democratic Primary process is not winner-take-all like the general election is.
But then again, just because she is winning big states in the Democratic Primary, that doesn’t mean she is going to win them in the general election. She’s running against a Democrat so it’s hard to say for certain.
Something else, and something that gets to the heart of where your train of thought supposedly derails, Clinton is, to some extent, pulling in the more middle class or blue collar people, but that could be more because her name is more well known to them compared to Democrats, and his isn’t. Blue collar and lower middle class people probably haven’t had the chance to be exposed to Obama compared to their higher income brethren. It looks like, though this is anecdotal at the moment, that when the voter populace is given a chance to learn more about him, the gap between the two begins to close. In every state I can remember, when they are up to vote, Clinton’s leads usually begin to shrink as voting day comes up.
And this… this has been the longest comment I have ever left in a blog… ever.
Ever.