Obama is on a roll, having won victories in Democratic caucuses in Washington State, Nebraska, and Maine and a primary in Louisiana this past weekend and seemingly poised to triumph in primaries in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia tomorrow. All the talk today is about the big M, Momentum.
The New York Times’ Patrick Healy quoted one superdelegate who has endorsed Clinton as saying: “She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out.” Other Clinton superdelegates were quoted as saying they were wavering in the face of Obama’s momentum this past weekend. Most political observers seem to agree that Clinton must at least win the popular vote in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4 if she is to stop Obama’s momentum.
Some Clinton advisers have sought to make light of Obama’s heralded momentum, noting that Obama won Iowa big but still did not triumph in New Hampshire and then trounced Clinton in South Carolina but failed to win the big states of New York and California on Super Tuesday. Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s communications director, has stated that “There is no evidence that voters are voting based on momentum — in fact the evidence is to the contrary.”
Writing two days after Super Tuesday, Adam Nagourney, another Times writer, observed:
But once again — as in New Hampshire — the result on Tuesday did not match the fervor that had been signaled by Mr. Obama’s dramatic march of rallies across the nation leading up to the vote. In that dynamic rests one of the central questions about the Obama candidacy, which may well go the heart of whether he can win the presidency. Is this campaign a series of surges of enthusiasm, often powered by the younger voters who form long lines waiting to hear Mr. Obama speak, that set expectations that are not met at the voting booth?
Or is it rather a slow-building force, one that despite faltering in New Hampshire and falling short on Tuesday in big states like California has allowed Mr. Obama to battle one of the most formidable political dynasties to a draw and will eventually propel him to victory?
Momentum. Does it have special significance in this contest or is it always a key factor? On the one hand, one might expect voters who are deeply committed to a candidate to stick by him or her and not defect in the face of losses to a competitor. On the other, not only do many people tend to flock to a winner but this year Democrats definitely want to win back the White House and seem more inclined to align with the candidate they feel has the best chance to win than with their emotional favorite.
And what exactly does momentum mean in the context of a political campaign? Many feel that Rudy Giuliani failed to take momentum into account in deciding to step back from the early electoral contests and wait until the race reached Florida. He seems to have been counting on no single rival gaining momentum or traction before Florida and perhaps on their undermining one another leaving him as the only viable candidate for the nomination. But not only did McCain make a remarkable political comeback from the tailspin of last summer, Giuliani’s minor roles in the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina deprived him of visibility. It was as if voters felt he was unfairly trying to join a marathon eight miles into the race rather than starting at the beginning and enduring all the obstacles like everybody else.
Then, too, Rudy seems to have suffered from a fate that still threatens Hillary – inevitability or the expectations game. In politics, if not in physics, momentum is in part a function of perception. Do voters believe a candidate is advancing inexorably? gaining strength? or is he or she slipping? losing ground? plateauing? The spinmeisters are constantly busy trying to put their candidates’ performance “in perspective.” Was the candidate “supposed to” do well in that primary? among those groups of voters? in that region? “Success” even among average voters is partly measured by whether the candidate beats the expectations, much as the stock market values a company in part by whether it exceeds Wall Street’s expectations.
Momentum surely has an objective dimension – a candidate who keeps on losing in primaries will not likely be seen as having any momentum even if his or her percentage of the vote steadily increases from contest to contest. But the significance of expectations in affecting momentum can perhaps best be illustrated through two modern examples: Senator Eugene McCarthy did not beat President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary in 1968 but McCarthy so beat the expectations that many to this day believe he did win the primary and thereby chased Johnson from the race. In a similar vein, in 1992, Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the “Comeback Kid” after the New Hampshire primary, suggesting to many that he turned things around and won that contest. But in point of fact, Clinton did not win the primary any more than McCarthy. Both Clinton and McCarthy gained enormous momentum in New Hampshire without winning the vote. They both won the expectations game.
Hillary began as the “inevitable” Democratic Party standard bearer. She may well have sought such a label with the intent to dissuade others from challenging her candidacy. But the risk in such a strategy is that if others do challenge, as Obama chose to do, a failure to trounce the challengers undermines one’s electoral credibility. When expectations intentionally made high to discourage others from competing are not realized a loss of momentum and possibly even a crisis of confidence among the electorate are highly likely to ensue. Hillary seems to have chosen to play this high stakes game. Whether she will suffer the consequences remains to be seen. Ohio and Texas may very well decide her fate.⌂
