Momentum Schmomentum
Posted in Politics by George
So today on the radio I hear someone talking about how he thinks that Hillary Clinton timed her surge perfectly, and now she has the “momentum” to carry her to victory.
Does anyone else think this statement - not just the one I heard on the radio - but the general idea of “momentum” and “surges” in politics is so stupid?
I mean, seriously, are we talking about running? When I think of “timing a surge,” I think of the tenth mile of a half marathon where my opponent is tiring out and I want to surge to drop him.
When people vote I sure hope they are not voting for someone because they won the previous primary. I can see voting for someone because they have exposed problems with the other candidate, or persuaded the public on issues, or whatnot, but for momentum? Sadly, I really think “momentum” has an effect on the way people vote.
There is nothing different between the two candidates’ political platforms from when they started the campaign and now. So if you vote for people purely based on the issues, you’re probably not going to change your mind about either of them as the primaries come and go.
However, most people don’t vote on the issues. Part of this is probably because most people don’t know the issues or pay attention to the issues because American Idol is on. They know “change,” or “experience,” or the statistical hogwash political commentary on TV. Therefore, if one candidate wins a primary, they get on TV a little bit more, and you hear more about “change” or “experience.” If one of those meaningless terms rings in your head more than the other, you might vote for the corresponding candidate.
If you think about the issues first, on the other hand, this would not be part of politics, because people would vote for those that stand most for their beliefs. Then maybe politicians would focus more on getting things done and less on presenting themselves…
March 7th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Politics is a popularity contest. People want to vote for a winner and want to be seen voting for a winner. Especially the superdelegates. Let me put it this way, if Obama wins and you are a mid-level party member who voted for Hillary, what do you think your chances of getting a job in the Obama administration would be? Tell me their thought process doesn’t work this way.
Momentum is only something cooked up by the media. If you look at the election results from Tuesday, Hillary netted 10 delegates more than Obama. But, listen to the news and you hear she had ‘huge’ victories? Really? She got one more delegate in Texas and 9 more in Ohio. How much momentum would she have if the media told us that Obama scored a bigger victory in Idaho (+12 delegates) than Hillary gained in her ‘comeback’ victory?
March 7th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Thanks for the comment, Chris. I totally agree. Making politics sound like a race certainly makes it a lot more exciting than the actual numbers…
March 7th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hi George!
I was listening to NPR yesterday and they made an interesting observation about Texas. Here is the online article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story...
Texas has a really weird system where they have a primary and then they also have a caucus. These two results then combine to see which candidate won the state. Over 1 million Democrats showed up to vote in the caucuses and it looks right now like Obama has enough support there to overtake the overall delegate count in Texas, making him the winner. The really stupid thing about this system is that we won’t know the official results until June, since there are a couple layers of caucuses to get through. Most news sources have already announced Clinton as the winner in Texas, also citing the “momentum” she has gained from this, but she probably actually didn’t win the state.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Yo, Steve.
1. NPR Rocks.
2. I totally agree that the way the news handles this is silly. They of course want the story: “Clinton is BACK for revenge!” rather than the title: “Tentative Results slightly favor Clinton on this particular day.”
Interesting story. I love how this stuff is just an asterisk instead of the real news.