Media Matters: Expectations Game Edition

Over the past two fundraising quarters, the Obama campaign has far outpaced the Clinton campaign in fudraising, despite its lower stature in national polls. The Obama campaign has been using this fact as a means to downplay Clinton's frontrunner status, arguing that the campaign's fiscal health would allow it to compete on Tsunami Tuesday (when most primary races will occur) on a level unattainable for Clinton.

Last week, it seemed like the Obama campaign would get to keep making this argument. That's before the Clinton campaign successfully managed a textbook execution of the expectations game. For over a week now, the Clinton campaign has been insisting that it would raise between $17-$20 billion during this fundraising quarter. When the Obama campaign announced that it raised $20 billion this quarter, Clinton's spokespeople claimed the best they could hope for would be that the two campaigns would draw even for the quarter.

Then, SURPRISE! Clinton raised $27 billion ($22 billion for the primary). Now the campaign has achieved something even better than a cash advantage for this quarter: process stories. Instead of talking about the intricacies of policy, the press will write stories all week about how Clinton exceeded expectations, outraised Obama for the first time, and has solidified her lead as the frontrunner. Obama will have significant difficulties stealing the spotlight during this week.

These are two very media savvy campaigns, but Clinton 's campaign won this match. Keep your eyes pealed for more expectation game follies. If you notice this or other media strategies employed by campaigns that you think are effective, post it on the blog, and let's discuss it.

~Jonathan

Obama Raises $25M

Senator Obama has raised an impressive $25 million for his campaign so far, putting him just behind Senator Clinton, who has thus far raised $26 million. Obama will be able to spend $23.5 million of that money on the primary race.

What is most impressive about this story is not just how much money Obama has raised; it is the fact that this money came from 100,000 different donors.

And so it begins...

The '08 smear campaign has begun - but not by the candidates themselves. The conservative website Insight has posted a report alleging that Senator Clinton's team is preparing to attack Senator Obama's Muslim background, claiming that he spent time in a Muslim seminary in Indonesia as a child. Just one problem...the New York Times reported on Monday that neither the news of the future attack nor the allegation itself is true. Insight's article names no sources and does not even name the reporter. Hmm...anonymous articles with unidentified sources. We can only imagine what else will follow between now and the election.

Already Hedging

Two stories about shifting positions

First, the Los Angeles Times has a story about how all that posturing from Nancy Pelosi and others about fighting back against big business is mostly just that: empty posturing. It's sad that our Democratic congress is only 100 hours in and already drawing back on a number of campaign promises. After all their talk about student aid, we got only cuts in Stafford Loans (The Boston Globe has a good summary here), with no help in Perkins Loans or Pell Grants or any other programs that specifically target poorer students. Couldn't they have had enough backbone between 330 congressmen and representatives to be actual Democrats for one week? It is sad.

Second, one place that can be counted on for finding people who will do impressively deep research is Daily Kos (of course, there are plenty people who do almost none. There's a front page post right now gloating about how "effective" Pelosi has been. I guess it's easy to say that when you ignore that the bills she's passing are compromising on every issue.) Anyways, this new set of diaries, starting here, chronicles every vote where John Edwards and Hillary Clinton differed while they were in the Senate together from 2001-2005. The first part chronicles their approximately thirty vote differences in 2001, and shows that, contrary to Edwards's attempts to portray himself as the farthest left in this primary, he actually was more likely that Hillary to be pro-business and anti-campaign finance reform. I was particularly disappointed to learn that Edwards, for example, supported the 2001 Bankruptcy Act that progressives like Paul Wellstone fought against. Obviously, Edwards (whom I supported in 2004) has had time to change his views, and I hope that further parts of the series will show that he did so while in the Senate, not more recently because he thought it would position him better. But it does support those who would say it's easier for Edwards to position himself as more progressive since he's no longer in the Senate After all, it's easy to tell Congress to cut funding for the Iraq War, when you're don't actually have to vote for it.

She's officially thinking about it.

The speculation can stop--Hillary is officially thinking about running for president. This primary is already shaping up to be spectacular as the NYTimes points out that this is the EARLIEST start for presidential campaigns in history. Hillary knows what she's up against, too. While remaining modest in her soundbytes by claiming that she doesn't see herself as the front runner thus far, her office is wasting no time putting out the stats. Her office boasts the results of a Washington Times-ABC News poll which puts her at 41% lead. Obama got a measely 17%.

Here are the rest of the poll results:

Clinton- 41%
Obama 17%
Edwards 11%
Gore 10%
Kerry 8%
All others <3%

And on the flip side...
Guiliani 34%
McCain 27%
Romney 9%
Gingrich 9%
Brownback 1%


And so it begins...