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THE MICROCAMPAIGN.
First Mark Penn gave us Microtrends, his methodologically-unsound book on the "small forces behind tomorrows big changes." Today, Hillary Clinton is trying "microcampaigning." Her events are full of microanswers. She's running the microcandidacy. Attending last night's Clinton rally, Harold noted the same bizarre rudderlessness I'd seen the day before. "Missing was a theme, an emphasis, a sorting of priorities, a touch of context, some urgency, a larger raison d'etre, a grand -- dare we say, presidential -- purpose," he writes. Another reporter friend of mine, attending yet a third Hillary event, scrawled in big letters in his notepad, "SHE HAS NO MESSAGE."
Microtrends was premised on the idea that we are now a country of niches. We aren't One Nation, Under His Noodly Appendage so much as we are Soccer Moms and Office Park Dads and Ardent Amazons and Aspiring Snipers and Late-Breaking Gays. We are, in other words, a collection of small groups, and small groups require a small politics -- a politics not of purpose or grand narrative, but of discrete policy proposals and bite-sized legislative innovations. As Mark Schmitt writes, Penn's "modus operandi has been to announce that some vaguely defined sub-category is the key to the electorate -- soccer moms, office park dads, or the even more dubious “Archery Moms” and “Ardent Amazons” of his new book -- then design a centrist, cautious politics to appeal to that key group."
But there's no key group in a primary. Since you don't have the Democratic base already on your side, you can't identify the Cabinet Constructors or Ikea obsessives who will provide that critical three percent boost. So rather than identifying one key group and constructing a campaign around their votes, Clinton has been treating the electorate as a loose collection of key groups, and devoting her campaign to taking enough questions that every single sub-demographic gets the answer they're waiting for. But when you're running to win over one key group, you at least have a message, a focus. When you're running to win all of them over individually, you have, by definition, no message. Some want change, some want experience, some want populism, some want moderation, some want hawkishness, some want health care reform, and some dont even know what they want. So the campaign has no message, only answers on each of these topics, answers which never stray from the specific issue at hand and don't dare wander into grander themes or ideas that could turn off another key group. It's made for rallies devoid of energy or enthusiasm. As one reporter said to me the other night, there are times when it feels like the Clinton Campaign is becoming a Microtrend.
COMMENTS (9)
ZOMG, U JST PWN3D HILLARY, EZRA!111!1!1!!!
Sorry, I just felt that the conclusion to that post required some hardcore leet smackdown.
Posted by: Sam | January 8, 2008 2:18 PM
And you just realized this? It's the DLC playbook. It can win state elections(probably due more to certain state machines) but when, besides Bill Clinton, did it ever win a national one? And one can say that Bill's personality overcame the DLC garbage.
Posted by: Joe Klein's conscience | January 8, 2008 2:26 PM
Obviously its just because Penn didn't find the right group. He should have focused on "Dinnerparty Dandies". You know, Democrats who are going to leave the party the next time they attend a dinner party and someone criticizes Bush.
Posted by: Rob | January 8, 2008 2:29 PM
If Obama wasn't in the race providing a strong contrast with Clinton, we would be talking about how Clinton is just the competent technocrat that is needed.
I love the Flying Spaghetti Monster reference.
Posted by: Neil in Ottawa | January 8, 2008 3:09 PM
She has a message, it is just that she can't use it any more because the race has been turned into this changefest. I prefer she not try a new one that is false. She has to hope that people want the most competent President. Hillary will never win over people who want a message in place of substance. She cannot be reduced to good feelings, the cult of personality, bashing the system to tap into evetyone frustrations, and then promising to magically transform it through the sheer radiance of one's star power. She is about offering answers and fixing problems. But that requires nuanced understanding and political compromise. You can't exactly feed that to the politcally uninformed and expect to impress them. Obama is not winning because of his message. We have problems and need change isn't exactly an earth shattering message. He is winning on style and star power. These cannot be beaten if the person with them can turn out enough unthoughtful, uninformed, unspohisticated voters to support him. Is it change for us to elect another inexperienced candidate promising to bring us all together?
Posted by: JT | January 8, 2008 3:34 PM
If Obama wasn't in the race providing a strong contrast with Clinton, we would be talking about how Clinton is just the competent technocrat that is needed.
Right. If Hillary continues to tank, a lot of people are going to be talking about how she made a gigantic strategic mistake. But really, she's run, for the most part, a pretty decent campaign. Certainly there have been mistakes around the margins, but fundamentally, the approach she has taken has been the most logical one for her to take. If she was going to win, she was going to win as the safe, responsible, competent candidate.
Right now, not enough people are buying what she's selling. But it's all she's really got to sell. If Bill Gates and Brad Pitt were competing over a girl, it wouldn't do Bill Gates much good to work out and get a make-over; if her decision comes down to who's the studliest, Brad's the winner. Instead, Bill has to argue that he's more wealthy than Brad is hot.
Sorry if that analogy seems kind of sexist.
Posted by: Jason C. | January 8, 2008 3:35 PM
Can't disagree, although it's easier to point out her lack of a message than to come up with a good one for her. She'd planned to run on toughness and competence but qualities aren't really a message either. What I think she should have probably done is to focus on her expertise on children's issues and education, which makes her experience argument for her, and which she could have woven into some inspiring message about the future.
Or something. Not easy, like I said.
Posted by: David Mizner | January 8, 2008 4:00 PM
I'd also point out that Penn's microtargeting is the logical antidote to Karl Rove's "50+1" - the idea that demographic analysis can and should play a role is really only in its nascent stages, and for some candidates, in some situations, it will work. But not here and not now, when Rove's divisiveness, as much as anything, is what we're all running away from. No one, right now, wants to be microtargeted (something, I'd guess, that has a role in the Christmas selling season just passed) for much of anything. As such, Obama's storyline - we're all part of a bigger thing (with Huckabee selling something similar to the GOP) - is the one that's holding sway. And it'll work as long as no one asks just what this bigger thing is, or whether we really all want to be a part of it. The minute thse questions pop up, microtargeting can peel off the edges.
Posted by: weboy | January 8, 2008 4:26 PM
"Archery Moms"??? How many of those could there possibly be?
Why not just go all the way and treat each individual voter as their own demographic?
Posted by: Jason C. | January 8, 2008 5:38 PM