NEW YORK -- Mitt Romney has become the PSY of presidential politics. And that's bad news for the Republican candidate on the 48th day before Election Day.
PSY (Park Jae-sang) is, of course, the South Korean rapper whose "Gangnam Style" dance video has generated an astounding 220 million YouTube views and rocketed him to global popularity virtually overnight.
WMR (Willard Mitt Romney) is, of course, the star of a now-infamous 48-minute, surreptitiously recorded video in which he bares what appears to be the essence of what appears to be his supply-side, let-'em-eat-cake soul to like-minded rich people at a fundraiser. The only music is the "pop" generated by the uncorking of fine wine.
The video, from which The Huffington Post posted excerpts on Monday (and Mother Jones later posted in the complete, extended-play dance mix), jolted websites, Twitter feeds and cable TV -- and the Romney campaign.
Here at HuffPost, the story generated more than 150,000 reader comments, far and away a record even by the engaged standards of our very engaged readership. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek/Daily Beast, told me last night that her site's traffic numbers spiked dramatically. They did elsewhere online and on cable, too.
Fox News was forced to interrupt its regular programming to deal with (that is, to promote) the video. The tone was interesting, which is to say, not kind to Mitt. They treated it as the car crash it was.
Looking and sounding like a skeptical detective at the scene of the accident, Fox's Neil Cavuto asked Romney if he hadn't just "kissed half the electorate goodbye" by claiming, on the video, that 47 percent of Americans are "moochers" who selfishly rely on the largesse of the federal government for food, shelter and health care even though they pay no federal income taxes.
By Wednesday, Fox was back to jamming the Democratic radar, touting a 14-year-old audio tape selectively edited to make President Barack Obama sound like a socialist believer in what Romney calls the "foreign" (but actually very American) idea of "redistributing" wealth.
The Mitt Vid story and its consequences say a lot about how campaigns are conducted in our digital day, and why all of Mitt's millions may not be enough to save him from his own aloof self.
In case you haven't noticed, we live in a place I'll call GTF America: Google, Twitter and Facebook. No amount of advertising, scripted campaign stops or TV interviews can counter the power of a single video the digital crowd suddenly demands to see. The power of word-of-mouth, amplified by those darned Internets, is almost beyond imagining, and way beyond any mere "broadcast."
Not coincidentally, the Mitt Vid was first obtained by websites.
Likewise, no amount of media "commentary" or "analysis" can match the power of voter/viewers looking at raw footage on their own, coming to their own conclusions about what they see, and then passing those conclusions (and the video link) on to others.
It's also worth noting that in these times, almost no event -- even with Secret Service in the vicinity, as was the case at that Florida fundraiser -- can be serenely and confidently viewed as off the record. Not when every phone is a video camera, and every camera is HD.
PSY's video became a sensation because it was a surprise, a startlingly catchy novelty.
WMR's video became a sensation because it was not a surprise: It confirmed every bad impression that voters have of him. The only surprise was that he actually said what people imagined he might say to people such as himself behind closed doors.
In the video, he undercuts whatever social legitimacy there was to supply-side economics, dismisses half the electorate as freeloaders and says that Middle East peace will never happen.
Romney's video proves to be a corollary to columnist Michael Kinsley's famous dictum that in politics, the biggest scandals arise when people say the most obviously true but usually unspoken things. Well, they also get in trouble when they say what they really think.
And truth is viral.
For Howard Fineman's full 2012 Countdown, click here.
Follow Howard Fineman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/howardfineman
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 |
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
(please note the correct spelling - its a verb not a tower)
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4 hours ago (12:40 PM)
Wait...what part of this video is controversial to you guys?
47% of people are going to vote for Obama no matter what. Same with Romney...probably 47% of people are going to vote for him no matter what.
There is one party that benefits from greater government dependency. They are called democrats."
Hogwash: the military are dependent on the government, as are well paid military contractors. Many of the 47% not paying Fed Income Tax ARE NOT dependent on government any more than Romney is for his low tax rate: they just make little enough money that the Earned Income Tax Credit or other deductions reduce their tax liability to zero. Republicans don't seem to mind when the wealthy or corporations end up paying no Federal income tax because of loopholes and deductions. It's only a problem when the little guy can manage it.
The Republican party is the party of ME.
The Democratic party is the party of WE.
Vote Obama / Biden
2012
the gop just filibustered the (paid-for) veteran's job act. shame on you.
Why should Romney release more tax returns? You would not understand his returns anyway. He has professionals doing his taxes. He probably doesn't understand all the forms, either.
This is not your daddy's Republican party. They are too extreme.
They do not bother to even hide their agenda anymore.
It is time to vote all Republicans out of office.
I thank America's lucky stars that the Romney/Ryan ticket is being consigned to history's dustbin, along with dozens of other failed power grabs by corrupt extremists who were totally in it for themselves, and couldn't care less about their fellow man, unless they live in a mansion with a four-car garage and a heliopad. BUH-BYE, MITT 'N' PAUL.
Now we make up our own mind as watching tee vee continues its decline.
"And truth is viral." thank god -now maybe it won't be such a rarity.