Obama, the Internet and the Decline of Big Money and Big Media

If it were not for the internet, and all the campaign- and voter-generated activism that it has enabled, Hillary Clinton would already be the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, and Barack Obama or another reform-minded candidate would be trailing badly. (On the Republican side, it's harder to make such a clear-cut statement, mainly because the field has been so open on that side. But again, I think the internet and all the campaign- and voter-generated activism it has enabled has helped keep the Republican field from solidifying, and certainly it has helped two of the four remaining candidates, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, extend their reach. For the purposes of this argument, though, I am going to focus on the Ds, a side that I know better anyway, and maybe one of our Republican contributors will wrestle with this on their side.)

From the 1980s forward, the presidential nominating process -- what political scientists call "the winnowing process" -- has been dominated by two things: the money chase and the big media's power to frame the primary narrative around the race. On the Democratic side, we've seen the same pattern play out every time there has been an open field (i.e., no sitting president running for re-election). One candidate is the favorite of the party's establishment and its major sources of funding, and one tries to create a reform coalition to dislodge the establishment favorite. That, in broad strokes, is the story of Mondale vs Hart in 1984, Dukakis vs Jackson in 1988, Clinton vs Brown in 1992, and Gore vs Bradley in 2000.

In 2004, something started to shift, and we saw a semi-outsider candidate powered mainly by small donations, Howard Dean, nearly steal the prize, but then the voters -- and the establishment and the money -- quickly solidified around John Kerry. The frontloading of the primaries--which has been engineered by a succession of party insiders who have wanted to insure a quick consolidation around a frontrunner (ideally from the establishment) has always given the edge to that better-financed establishment candidate. And certainly once Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire, that was the end of any reform challenge to the frontrunner.

To be clear, I don't think the Democratic pattern can be distilled simply down to Big Money + Party Establishment vs Smaller Money + Outsider Reformer. As Ron Brownstein pointed out in a great column last year, there's a demographic element to this pattern too. In each case cited above, the victorious "insider" candidate has also managed to appeal to the more working-class Democratic base while the "reformer" has tapped more well-educated liberal types. Beer-drinkers vs wine-drinkers. Labor vs eggheads. Ethnic Catholics vs Jews and blacks. Brownstein warned that Obama, with his two best-selling introspective books and Harvard pedigree, might simply be repeating the same Hart-Jackson-Brown-Bradley role, while Clinton, with her base among working women, union members and urban minorities, was more likely to maintain the upper hand. And that may still be the story of 2008.

Now, Clinton vs Obama does have echoes of Gore vs Bradley or Mondale vs Hart. In each case, you have a former VP (or former First Lady, which Hillary is playing as if she was VP) against a reformist Senator. In each case, the reformist campaigned for change and new ideas over experience. But with Obama, two things are different.

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Comments

[research]

Obama's Big Money corporatist contributers:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00009638&cycle=2008

Thus, your premise is false.

[patapsco99]

Obama- reformist, he cannot even hide his own prejudice. He opened his speech last night with education, "Black and White kids deserve a better education." Where is the hispanics and Asians in this statement? Obama does not care about other races, and just includes the whites for votes. He needs to check himself and find out how to speak to everone.

[BillZBubb]

As I understand it, Obama has some big money behind him. I don't think he's hurting for big donors.

My state's primary hasn't happened yet, but the more I read from the Obama supporters, the more I'm leaning towards Hillary. Your piece is just another example. I keep hearing about Obama's "ideas" and "change" but I have yet to see any workable specifics. The information on his website has a lot of feel good rhetoric, but not a lot of reality based political positions. Maybe that is the way to win political campaigns these days--it worked for Bush.

I like that Obama was against the Iraq war, but I don't like that he has repeatedly voted to keep funding it based on Bush's requests. Still, his initial opposition on Iraq gives him an edge over Clinton on that issue.

If all Hillary Clinton offered was a return to the economic sanity of the 1990's, that would trump anything Obama is talking about.

[whimsicalpig]

I don't agree with you r premise.

It was totally the lack of MSM coverage that caused Biden and Dodd to exit the race.

They were two qualified individuals who DID NOT TAKE SPECIAL INTEREST MONIES and as such were not covered by the MSM due to lack of funds.

If obama had stuck to those principles and not ingratiated himself with these special interests, he would be a footnote now too.

it's all about money and MSM and obama is no different than clinton by those standards

[markkraft]

I think that Obama and his supporters can afford to be gracious about their victory last night, and should throw her a bone.

Obama/Clinton, anyone?!