What’s
Wrong Today:
For as far back as any of us can remember, political
candidates ran as loyal members of their party. That’s where a candidate found
funding as well as tactical and strategic support.
Party-centric
campaigns were the rule and they were usually successful. Candidates proclaimed their party affiliation by using companies like Super cheap signs to design bumper stickers, campaign signs and buttons; they embraced their party’s platform and worked to convince the undecideds of the essential rightness of the party’s position on the issues.
Today, that’s changed. Party branding is in many cases, elusive.
Consider
the current race in California’s 10th District. Incumbent Republican
Jeff Denham is running
against Democrat new comer, Jose Hernandez. The race is considered a toss-up in what
is a newly drawn conservative-leaning district.
This hotly contested race is supported by
outside funding from both parties and multiple visits from each party’s icons
in support of their guy. You may have heard of Congressman Jeff Denham, a successful
local business man. A 16-year member of the National Guard, Denham is a veteran
of Desert Storm (Iraq) and Restore Hope (Somalia). Jose Hernandez is the child of migrant workers who wasn’t fluent in English until he was 12. He went
on to become an Astronaut (Space Shuttle Discovery).
He worked as an engineer on digital mammography products at Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory and was a NASA employee until 2011.
These are both accomplished guys.
Check
out the campaign signs for each contender:
First,
Jeff Denham:
Next, Jose Hernandez:
So, What’s Missing?
They
do not advertise their party affiliations. The new normal is that no candidate wants you
to know which party they affiliate with, it
might turn you off.
Where the Wrongologist lives, there are
political signs on most lawns. They list
the name of the candidate in large print and the office they are seeking in
small print.
In
our state, we have 12 major party federal candidates running for office, 5 congressional districts and one senate race. Only one congressional
candidate identifies with his party on his web site home page, while another
lists her party only on her “about” page. The Republican senate
candidate’s signs are blue without
party identification. The Democratic
candidate’s signs are red. No party is listed on his signs, either.
Why
are candidates hiding their party affiliations? You know that voters will discover it in the voting booth, if not
before. Candidates don’t run away from their parties in the primaries, they need
to show the party faithful how closely they hew to the party line so that the
party faithful to come to the polls and choose them over the other party guy
contesting the primary.
But
when it comes to the general election, independents, unaffiliated, or undecided
voters are likely to be as large a group of potential voters as those in their
party, or in the opposition party.
It turns out that our parties have become
really unpopular, except in the reddest or bluest of districts.
Hiding party affiliation can make a
difference wherever there are intensely fought races, with partisans in both
parties. That’s where you see candidates trying not to alienate anyone who
might otherwise be open to their message. In many cases, it is the opposition
party and fellow Super PAC travelers that make the opposition candidate’s party
affiliation clear to voters.
Today’s
candidates try to create candidate-centered campaigns. Their effort is to create
interest in their personal story and character without overly focusing on their
ideology, since party affiliation may be enough reason to summarily reject the
candidate. It is a balancing act: the candidate needs the base to turn out on Election
Day, but they also need the swing vote in order to win, so the party-centered campaigns of the past are likely to remain a
thing of the past in our red/blue polarized nation.
What are they hiding?
It
isn’t just party affiliation that is hidden by the candidates. Today candidates slide from one side of the issue in primary to a
middle position on all but the most basic litmus issues in the general
election.
In some cases (yes, you Mr. Romney),
positions change dynamically week-to-week, venue-to-venue.
This used to be impossible, because TV
networks and cable news travel with candidates 24×7, so candidates couldn’t
change their stories without being fact-checked by the media. Although the news
cycle is still 24×7, and the networks still travel with the candidates, consistency with prior positions no longer
seems to matter, any more than does obscuring which party supports a candidate.
What’s up with that?
So, what did we lose?
We
have lost our ability to judge how a candidate really will represent the constituents.
We have also lost a little more of
the remaining shreds of credibility in our political process.
