I'm sitting here on the other side of the Atlantic, where TVs are tuned to CNN and people ask you about the campaign when they realize you are American, trying to make some sense of Tuesday's results. (Clinton took three of the four states on Tuesday; delegate counts to come.)
In no particular order, here goes:
- This election season, Democrats seem as divided as a group (I'm including those independents who voted in primaries and caucuses) as the nation has been as a whole the past two cycles.
- Voters are tired of media pundits telling them that their votes don't count and/or that the race is over.
- Negative campaigning works. (Well, we've always known that it works; we now have evidence that it works in modern primaries, too.) In other words, voters say that they want a moral high ground, but think differently when it comes to the polls.
What we don't know: what will be the effect, in November, of a protracted nomination battle?
For more, see Carpetbagger Report, The Swamp.
Comments
Hi Kathy,
Enjoying sunny Catalunya?
By the way, just a little comment on the way people here in Europe react to the US election. Yes, we are tuned to it (even myself), because after all the USA is still a superpower. One with clay feet, but still a big guy. But don’t get it wrong, there is just as much of the attraction we could have for a soap than for the real politics. Most people realize all too well, that whoever is going to get elected, it won’t change anything for real for the rest of the world. The USA are still going to consider themselves as the world leader (or “the leader of the free world”, as I wrote somewhere else) and act as such. European leaders will more or less bow to it (to get what they want in the usual bargaining game) and the masses in the rest of the world will continue to loathe America or laugh about it. Not for what it really does (perception is the only relevant thing), but for what it represents and wants to represent.