What percentage of likely voters do you think will reach this interpretation?
I must’ve missed the polls where a significant number of Dem primary voters found Kerry unacceptable during the primary season.
It was certainly that way 20 years ago, but as best as I can tell, that’s less and less true as time goes on. For instance, if independent voters aren’t tuned in to the GOP primaries in large numbers, how come Romney’s approval rating among independents has plummeted during this primary season?
Meh, you could’ve said the exact same thing about Dems and Bush in 04 but the reality is it takes no effort to hate, it takes some to go vote and it takes a candidate you actually like in order for that to be worth it.
Well, we know what Garry Trudeau will use as a stand-in icon for Romney in Doonesbury now.
You misunderstand, I think. The quotes will still be available for use in attacks. It’s just that a new effort will be required to make people aware of them and make them stick. This costs money and time, both in short supply. That’s why political ads are repeated so often. The number I’ve heard varies, but it something like 12, as in a claim won’t be remembered until people have heard it 12 times. We’re likely to see a subset of the controversies that the primary season have raised. Especially since most of them are so utterly meaningless. Does anyone think this Etch-a-Sketch “gaffe” will be part of the actual presidential battle?
Ah, the mythical independents. I may be totally off on this, but every presidential race I’ve looked in the past has a large group of voters suddenly appear after the conventions. The media calls them independents but I call them the inattentives. They make up their minds in the last month, many in the last week. The Internet is loaded with people who call themselves independents in political discussions. But the people I’m talking about aren’t paying attention to politics in March. Or June.
Or as Gore Vidal once said, “Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
I think most thoughtful[sup]*[/sup] people will reach my interpretation. Non-thoughtful people will accept whatever interpretation they are fed by their source of information (authority figure, media outlet, etc.). The net number of minds changed by this incident will approach zero.
My objection is to your assertion that playing this clip is going to somehow guarantee victory for Obama. Even if this statement was from Romney himself, recorded in his secret underground lair, and clearly subscribed to the interpretation in your OP – it wouldn’t change anyone’s mind. Romney has been labelled as an opportunist that is willing to say anything for a vote since the 2008 primaries. It is this reputation that has dogged him for the 2012 primary and is the reason every other Republican candidate has gotten a turn at the top. After all of this time, we all get it. Republicans will hold their nose or stay home as they see fit. It won’t matter that Romney’s campaign guy said something that could be stretched to mean something that everyone already knows.
My mistake, I meant 2008 – Clinton and Obama. There was a lot of noise that Clinton voters would stay home rather than vote for Obama after the nasty and prolonged primary fight. I’m sure the same noise would have been made if Clinton had won the nomination.
Since I answered your question, let me ask one. Which interpretation do you think Eric Fehrnstrom intended?
- Which isn’t to say thoughtful people can’t arrive at your interpretation. I don’t intend this as a insult, veiled or otherwise.
True. But that’s one thing that makes them dangerous. These inattentives don’t devote enough effort to learn what’s really going on or who the candidates really are. They vote based on the buzz they hear.
So Romney doesn’t have to worry about what Fehrnstrom said. He has to worry about the impression that’s formed from what Fehrnstrom said.
I agree with this in general. Romney’s tax returns won’t be a big deal come election time, but the portrait of him an out-of-touch super rich guy will. Likewise what Fehrnstorm said won’t matter, but the aggregate idea that Romney says anything to get elected will.
It is why a lie will stick even after it is debunked. It is also why a campaign needs to fight back against claims otherwise they will become part of that candidate’s folklore.
You don’t actually believe that the PUMAs were real Clinton voters or real Democrats, do you? Yes, there was noise, but it was all coming from Republicans.
As Adlai Stevenson is reputed to have said, “I’m glad all the thoughtful people are on my side, but madam, I need a majority.”
Anyhow, I wasn’t asking about them, just voters:
I beg to differ. It won’t so much change anyone’s mind, as lock in reservations that were already forming in people’s minds. In my judgment, there are people out there who, less than one day ago, might’ve plausibly been won back by Romney, who are essentially unreachable now.
Speaking of 2004, once Kerry had let the Swiftboaters and the GOP convention speakers define him, the game had slipped away from him: even a perfect campaign the rest of the way, including winning three debates with Dubya according to polls and pundits alike, it was out of his reach, and it would have taken either a big mistake by Dubya’s team, or a game-changing event, to bring it back within reach.
IMHO, that’s just happened here, only to Romney this time. As of today, he can no longer win this by the efforts of his own side alone.
OK, but I think it was even more true in 2008 than 2004. There was media-fluffed noise about those Clinton voters, but there was, as best as I can recollect, no evidence that they represented enough votes to pay attention to.
I really don’t care, is the answer. What interests me is the power of this moment. I didn’t expect it to be as big a deal as it’s turned out to be so far: I expected Team Obama to have to at least do some work to rub this one into the nation’s consciousness. Instead, we have Newt and Ricky waving Etch-A-Sketches on the campaign trail, while Obama’s team can just stand aside and let the Republicans do their work for them.
Really, that’s your answer? You’ll throw your opinion out on a myriad of subjects here, but you can’t be bothered to answer a legit question from someone that bothered to answer yours?
I think you are a bit off on this. There’s the pundit-driven mythology of the existence of a substantial number of thoughtful independent swing voters, which we both agree is bullshit. And there are the genuine late-in-the-game undecideds, who are the ‘inattentives’ that you’re talking about. One place where you’re wrong is that they are not exactly a huge group, just a few percent of the electorate, a small number which is getting smaller, given how little attention one has to pay for how long to miss the very fundamental philosophical divide that now exists between the two parties.
But the main thing you’re missing is that the people who the pollsters categorize as independents really do exist, in large numbers, and I’m talking about them. Most of them really do have a distinct lean to them towards one party or the other; the true independents are relatively rare, and are, as you say, mostly low-information, low-attention voters. But that doesn’t mean that their minds are made up on how, or more likely, whether, to vote: a random GOP-leaning independent may be a longshot to switch and vote for Obama, but if he’s sufficiently disgusted with Romney, he might vote libertarian, stay home, or whatever. And if he’s sufficiently enthusiastic about Romney, he might contribute money to the campaign, might work on persuading his undecided friends to vote for Romney, and so forth. And similarly on the other side.
The low approval of Romney among independents means that the Dem-leaning independents are, barring some big change, genuinely out of reach for the Romney campaign. And it’s going to be hard to find reasons to motivate the GOP-leaning independents to show up and vote Republican in November. Many will, of course, but many won’t.
And if there’s data saying the independents with a noticeable lean to their politics aren’t paying attention this early, I’ve missed it.
I answered it, AFAIAC. I can’t make you like the answer.
Here’s Mitt’s comments on Etch-A-Gaffe:
I suspect that’s a more ridiculous explanation than anything any of us had even considered.
Okay, a “stand-in icon” is like a floating feather for Dan Quayle… But, um, what did you have in mind for Romney? I have no idea what you mean. *
- “Sketchy” Og
I’m picturing a floating Etch-a-Sketch.
Bumper sticker:
EtchaSketch with a line through it
Probably already available
Crane
Ya’ think?
I certainly agree with what you and others have said in this thread that what is important in the long run is the narrative about a candidate that is built up from a number of seemingly small and often marginal, false, or irrelevant incidents. In fact that’s the real job of both campaigns, to create and control a narrative about both sides. Smart campaigns capitalize on these fluffs and gaffes. When people talk about bad campaigns they often really mean bad as this, even when they don’t say so explicitly.
So I guess my difference is that I continue to see independents as much more of a wild card. The Pew Political Typology is significant. (Once again, the actual findings for these numbers do not come from the quiz on the Internet. That’s just a party game. The real questionnaire is much longer.)
Pew has a category it calls disaffecteds, which are broadly similar to my inattentives. They’re 11%. But it also has a category of Bystanders at 10%, who are not registered voters. They have two other categories of Mostly Independent, Libertarians and Post-Moderns, who comprise 22% of the population.
We immediately run into trouble when we try to apply these figures to presidential elections. Something obviously doesn’t fit. The percentage of the eligible population who doesn’t vote is a full 45%. Even if you counted every Bystander, large percentages of the other types don’t vote. And with 37% Mostly Democratic and only 20% Mostly Republican, Democrats should win handily always.
You get better numbers by looking at the registered voter column. Republican-leaning types register higher than the percentage of the population, Democratic-leaning types lower. And the Hard-Pressed Democrats, especially males, are much more Republican than that indicates, I think. If you give Republicans Staunch Conservatives, Main Street Republican, Libertarians, and half of Hard-Pressed Democrats you get 42.5% and give the Democrats New Coalition Democrats, Post-Moderns, Solid Liberals, and other half of Hard-Pressed Democrats, you get 46.5%. Sure these are fast and loose generalizations, but that’s pretty much in line with the last election.
And that leaves the Disaffecteds. We already know the results for at least 40 states. Nobody talks about more than 10 states being in play. Who swings the swing states? There will be some slippage in the bases, because there always is. Romney is getting his votes from the more urban and therefore moderate to liberal areas in every state he has won. He’ll have a hard time winning those in November - unless there is a bad economy or some other factor he can spin a narrative about Obama being an incompetent or at least ineffective president. He’ll have the money to try to make that case stick.
For me the rest - the biggest part - of the uncertainly comes from those Disaffecteds. We know very little about them yet. The people claiming to be independents in the primaries are highly unlikely to be Disaffecteds - there’s no evidence that they turn out this early. Social media may yet prove to play a huge role in the election but we simply don’t know what that’s going to be.
When you say “many will, but many won’t” you’re getting to the heart of the problem. Most of the race is predictable. I started calling the nomination a year ago for Romney based mostly on demographics. (And cynicism about the Republican Establishment.) Demographics say that Obama will do well in the swing states because they have high percentages of urban areas. Romney would have to take all seven midwestern states that McCain lost just to have a hope of contending and that seems unlikely to impossible today. But there’s an uncertainty of 10% in a race that will be decided by less than 10%. And for me that uncertainty comes entirely from those I call the inattentives. For me, nothing short of a meteor striking before the conventions will be truly meaningful. The real race starts after the last convention bump.
Well, we can probably count on “staff” being different…