The following piece as produced by HuffPost's OffTheBus.
My friend Jeanne called last night to complain about the shrillness of the Democratic presidential debate on CNN. She fits the profile of a person all the candidates would like to reach - concerned mother, registered voter who doesn't identify with a specific party, and resident of a southern state that could go either way in the next election.
She wants to find out more about the candidates, and televised debates are the easiest way for her to see and hear all of the candidates after her daughter has gone to bed. But she's completely turned off by the barrage of attacks from both parties. Proving her point, several of today's headlines proclaim "Hillary Wins Fight Night." It provides controversy for the news media, but my friend doesn't give a whit about the barbs Clinton and Obama are flinging at one another, and she's completely turned off by reports that McCain smirked when a supporter called Hillary the B-word during a political rally this week. She wants to hear the candidates proffer a plan for education that reassures her about public schools or a plan for healthcare that makes her feel her family will be covered without going bankrupt. She cares about Iraq, but it's a much more remote concern - this may come as a surprise to most of the candidates, but it unquestionably isn't the issue that's going to make her vote next year.
My friend is a compassionate person who would love to see all of our soldiers safe from harm's way. She's actually inclined to think this is a war waged for the benefit of the oil and defense industries, but she doesn't have time to delve into it. She also doesn't know - or care - how any of the candidates voted on Iraq in 2003. She's too busy working to pay the mortgage, worrying about where to send her daughter to high school, and trying to save enough money for college tuition. The candidate who demonstrates they can help her deal with those concerns is the one who will get her vote.
I suspect this isn't news to most of America, but I've just returned to the "real world" after 14 years in the nation's capital, where everyone I know is either involved in campaigning or, at the very least, tuned into the nuances and hiccups of politics. Now that I've been back in the South for a couple of months, I find that most of my friends and family are more focused on the realities of their daily lives than politics. Even with the primaries looming over the horizon here in South Carolina, a key primary state, most of the regular (i.e., non-political) people I know really aren't prepared to make a decision.
In fact, many are disillusioned because they feel the "decision" is out of their hands - that it's being decided by fundraisers who claim "frontrunner" status based on how many millions they have in the bank. Make no mistake - regular people detest this aspect of politics because they feel their vote has no power, especially after what's happened in the last two presidential elections. I won't be at all surprised if some of my own friends and relatives vote against the folks with the most money in the primary just to make a point.
On the other hand, I also have friends here in South Carolina who are involved or interested in the election, though most have worked in or around politics for a number of years. What's interesting is that while the majority have lined up behind a consensus candidate in the past, I don't see it happening this time. On the Democratic side, which I admittedly know best, all things seem about equal for Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Polls may dispute this assessment, but I'm speaking anecdotally.
Among the people looking for real change and an end to the war in Iraq, Obama seems to be the frontrunner. My friend Mary has supported Dennis Kucinich in the past because she believed he expressed the purest version of her views. But, this time, she's throwing her support to Obama, who she and many others see as the candidate for change. She, like many women I know, would love to see to a woman president, but she has serious reservations about whether Hillary would effect real change or end the war.
Interestingly, the state's African American community seems to be lining up behind Hillary, and it isn't just the political powers. When I was here to cover the CNN/YouTube debate back in the summer, there was an African-American female shuttle driver who told me she cared most about healthcare for her family and believed Hillary was the candidate who could best address her concerns. We were passing a large contingent of Obama supporters at the time, so I inquired about his prospects - to my surprise, the driver said that while she wants to see an African American in the White House some day, she thinks Hillary has more experience. Maybe some of those polls that found more high school-educated women support Hillary were accurate after all. Frankly, I was astonished that they would relate to an Ivy-educated, Midwestern lawyer and career politician who has spent most of her adult life in DC and New York. While I haven't seen the full analysis, I also suspect the "Bill Factor" influenced those responses.
If nothing else, Hillary Clinton could sail to victory on her husband's popularity here - which may indeed assure that she takes the African American vote. When Bill visited Charleston and Georgetown on Hillary's behalf this week, the campaign made the best use of his time at African American-owned beauty salons - see the many photos floating around the Web of Bill surrounded by admiring South Carolina women who plan to vote. Not to be flippant, many of these folks long to return to the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years and see his wife as perhaps the next best thing.
Edwards, a native South Carolinian, carried the state last time around and still seems to have plenty of support. He is the only candidate in either party who has a television ad running here that presents issues - the economy and jobs - that matter to regular folks. A South Carolina ETV/Winthrop University poll conducted two weeks ago found Edwards with 10 percent of support among likely Democratic voters, trailing Hillary with 33 percent and Obama at 23 percent. It will be interesting to see if he can come from behind based on his "homeboy" status and a positive message. My friend Jeanne, who resides in Edwards' home state of North Carolina, may ultimately be more inclined to support him because his staff helped her with a medical issue when he was in the Senate - again proving that most regular folks are swayed by politics that are both personal and relevant to their lives.
The other ads running here are from Romney and Thompson, who tell us how conservative they are and that they'll support our troops and a pro-life agenda. They, along with Guiliani, are spending lots of time in South Carolina and seem to have the benefit of the most thorough and biased coverage from the local media, who apparently have decided en masse that their viewers and readers are all conservatives. Thus, there's a dearth of information for folks who may see themselves as more progressive - they're here, but are made to feel their votes won't count, so why bother. (This is fodder for another column.)
I went to DC in 1992 to work on the Clinton-Gore campaign and in the Administration, full of hope and idealism for a bright new world. Having just left a career in journalism, I also carried a good bit of cynicism toward my new vocation, but I desperately wanted to believe we could change the world - or politics as we knew it. Of course, I learned that Bill Clinton's message of change was carefully crafted by James Carville and based on tons of research. But the campaign did have a positive platform and messages - and Bill Clinton won by not "getting down in the gutter" with our opponents, as my mother would say. We had a "rapid response" team that responded to attacks in the same news cycle, but it was still a pre-Internet, pre-cable news era, even though it was only 15 years ago. Perhaps the constant barrage of negative media today is why candidates feel they must use every minute of free national debate time responding to or attacking their opponents. I understand the strategy, but is it really the right approach if the goal is to reach undecided voters?
I'm a political and news junkie who knows where to look to find the candidates' positions on issues I care about. But let's face it - most people don't have the time or inclination to search for candidate positions, and they're certainly not getting the information in the 15 minutes a day they have to read the local newspaper or watch TV news. So here's a message to the candidates and their communications gurus - don't waste your valuable national airtime haranguing at each other. The very people you're trying to convince can - and will - turn the channel, just as my friend Jeanne did last night. And she won't see or read the resulting media reports claiming "Hillary Won Fight Night."
The people who care about Iraq and the vagaries of your votes have already decided how they're going to vote in the primaries - or live in states that won't be voting in the early stages. Use your time to tell the regular folks out here, especially in the key primary states, how you're going to improve their lives. Tell them what you're going to do about the slowing economy, healthcare, education and the environment - there's a drought down here, not only of water but also of useful information.