Well, first things first:
Palpitus wrote:
In sum, with Rove gone and an unlikely EC tally to occur again, the X-factor imo is the media. They ignored problems with the Iraq war justification.
On what planet do you watch your News? Or do you mean "The media didn't do enough parroting of far left conspiracy theorist websites with regard to the Iraq war justification"? Cause that's a bit closer to the truth. To be as fair as I can on this issue, the media didn't go overboard on this, but it's certainly covered it to death.
Seriously. That was 4 years ago. It's also "done". Bush isn't running for office. Aside from your own personal views, why should this even be a news story in any way related to the coming election?
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They haven't raised a ruckus against democrats for failing their '06 campaigns of End-Iraq-War.
I'll be fair here again and say that they have at least mentioned it. Certainly with no where near the fervor as the debate over WMDs in Iraq, but it has been talked about in passing along the way. Usually in a "Look at those evil Republicans blocking this bill to feed homeless children dying of untreatable diseases" manner, but it's been there.
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They appear as a whole enabling and pro-neocon.
Lol. Seriously. It's that or 12 pages proving you wrong.
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The X-factor to them can only be Obama, with his superficially powerful speeches forcing them to wax on about his oratory skills.
Sure. The media loves Obama. Cause he says things that sound great, and they get to put that on their networks and get ratings. I suppose that makes him seem better in the polls, but that's an echo chamber at work. It doesn't translate into votes.
Media shows exciting clip of Obama and talks about how great he is. Viewers see this, don't know much about him, but the guy on TV said he's great, right? Some viewers take part in a survey and when asked who they think will win say Obama, cause he looked pretty good on TV, right? Poll results are shown on TV, with "surprisingly good" response for Obama. Media talks about that and gushes some more. Repeat process and you end up with polling results that are double digits off from how people will actually vote.
The media loves this cause it gives them the first set of stories, and then it gives then another set as they talk about the surprising difference between the polls and the votes. Yup. The business really is that shallow...
As to the broader question? That's hard to say. The X-factor can come from anywhere. Each candidate has their own strategy, and there's a lot of things that can happen to affect them. Obviously, some candidates are playing the "get big numbers early and use the media attention that draws to propel me onwards" strategy. Obama did this pretty well. So did Huckabee. I think this *was* Ronmey's strategy and it made sense 8 months ago when they planned it and he was sitting firmly in third place behind McCain and Guiliani. I think it was a mistake though, since in the time between then both of the other two lost ground and he was actually looking at a lead position. Not a good thing when you planned for a third place "need an early bump" strategy.
Another big x-factor are issues. IMO, this is forgotten quite often, to many candidates detriment. It's a bigger deal after the nomination of course, but it's huge. IMO, the single biggest reason Kerry lost in 2004 had nothing to do with the Swiftboat people, nor specifically with Rove's "plan". It really was Kerry himself. And honestly, it's a problem that all Dem candidates face just due to the structure of the party's platform.
The Dem platform is designed to appeal directly to a bunch of different groups. That works wonderfully at winning district seats in the House and even state seats in the Senate, because each candidate can focus their issues on issues that the people of that state/district care the most about. But when it comes to trying to come up with a single national position on a set of issues that will resonate equally in as many states as possible, it's a hard sell.
Republicans tend to have a simpler approach that focuses on a small set of key positions that tend to resonate nationwide. They wont pick up as many voters in one particular spot as a focused issues candidate will, but they also don't have to change their message depending on where they are.
That last bit is critical (and I suppose the media plays into it, but not in a traditional way). What beat Kerry was that he was seen as inconsistent and deceptive. That was largely because he'd give 5 different speeches in 5 different states and say 5 radically different things. Now in the day's before the internet, this may not have been noticed. Each state would focus it's local coverage on the local events and only give a shallow amount of coverage to the national picture. But with the internet, every voter could read or view the speeches candidates were giving anywhere. And not just snippets, but the whole thing. And it became really obvious that Kerry was promising the voters in Georgia things that were completely different then what he was promising the voters in say Ohio.
Bush, meanwhile, had a very simple message. He basically repeated the same 4 or 5 points over and over everywhere he went. So, not as tailored to each location, but also not obviously
tailoring to each location. Nationally, that made him appear more believable and trustworthy.
That's obviously my personal opinion on the subject, but I think it's *huge*. The Dems will have to figure out how to present a message that isn't so obviously constructed and tailored to each group of voters. They'll need to find a common message that will resonate with voters. Because today's media is pretty good at spotting and reporting perceived inconsistencies. If they can pull that off, they'll likely win the Whitehouse. If they can't, they'll lose.