Now that the much-ballyhooed Texas and Ohio primaries have officially settled nothing other than the fact that the Democratic primary race will continue, the American public gets to wait seven more weeks until another major primary. True, there is a caucus in Wyoming tomorrow and a primary in Mississippi on Tuesday (both of which should be easy Obama victories), but the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 has 158 delegates at stake, nearly three times the amount of Wyoming and Mississippi combined. So we should look forward to a month and a half of silence, right?
Wrong. The candidates want to keep themselves fresh in your mind (predictably), so they're going to do all they can to keep themselves in media coverage, and especially to make sure that their opponent looks as bad as possible. So we should look forward to engaging and intellectual debates about the various issues facing our country, right?
Wrong again. With a few exceptions, party primaries aren't really about issues. (The 2006 Senatorial primary in Connecticut between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont, which was widely seen as a referendum on the Iraq War for the Democratic party, is a good example of this.) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have differences when it comes to the issues, but for all intents and purposes, they're very minor issues. Both of them agree that we need a universal health care program. Both of them believe we should get our troops out of Iraq. Both of them believe we need to turn around the economy. Their only major policy difference is Obama's claim that he'll meet with leaders of countries such as Cuba, Iran, and North Korea without setting preconditions, but the fact that this hasn't received much attention in the media goes to show you that these elections aren't about issues.
I've argued before that this election is about image. If you want proof of that, you need look no further than the slogans for each candidate. Obama's is "change we can believe in," and Clinton's is "solutions for America." Could we have two less substantive themes? Obama has been famously vague about what sort of change he will enact as president, earning criticism from the Clinton camp, but she has been equally vague on what "solutions" she would provide. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, though. We already know what issues and policies the Democratic candidate will pursue in office, whichever of them is ultimately nominated. What we're voting for is an image. Do we want the candidate who has an image of hope and staying above the fray, or do we want the candidate promising experience and an ability to fight?
Once you accept the idea that the election has nothing to do with issues, the fact that stories such as Obama's traditional Somalian outfit or Clinton's dallying to release tax information are dominating news cycles comes as no surprise. They aren't trying to show that the other is weaker on the issues. They're working to destroy image, because ultimately, that's what voters are deciding this primary season. An interesting side note: for all the noise generated about McCain being a phony conservative, can you think of anyone who looks more like a Republican than him? He looked and acted the most like a conservative of any of the candidates, with the possible exception of Ron Paul. He's old, and he's cranky. Mitt Romney was his strongest competitor, but the image he gives off seems like he would have been more at home in the Democratic party. (Is it any surprise that he was elected as the governor of Massachusetts?)
So prepare for a lot of stories about nothing over the next seven weeks. They may sound important and critical to the election, but you'll find that even if it sounds like there are issues on the surface, it boils down to image, and that's what counts in the end.
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