Like Those Guys, But Less Fab.

Grassroots movement. Grassroots effort. Grassroots support. At the mere sound of these ubiquitous buzzwords, political operatives everywhere begin to salivate uncontrollably. Everyone wants a grassroots something.

Which makes perfect sense. For political candidates, a strong grassroots simply means: a bunch of people who give you money and campaign for you without asking for anything in return, besides a slightly creepy handshake and/or extended hug. In short, a strong grassroots is a pretty sweet deal.

Unfortunately, like all sweet deals, the devil's in the details.

Campaigns focus an incredible amount of energy on the herculean task of controlling their message. In the era of cable news, YouTube, and the Drudge Report, the slightest misstep, inconsistency, or gaffe is shoved into the unforgiving meat grinder of public scrutiny. Great pains must be taken to ensure that the candidate, and everyone affiliated with the candidate, follows the official script. Yes, this results in boring television, but it sure beats losing an election.

Grassroots supporters, on the other hand, are somewhat lacking in the script department. This isn't usually a bad thing; the unpolished, real-life advocacy these supporters bring to the table is their strongest asset. But, unfortunately, strong grassroots movements can easily take on a decidedly religious aura. The supporters become dogmatic and obsessed, completely sold on the idea that their candidate is a political messiah. Like all religions, these movements are exhilarating for participants, but outsiders are generally repulsed by the fanaticism of their adherents. Gradually, it becomes impossible for observers to mentally separate the secular deity from his followers, tarnishing his image permanently.

The ill-fated presidential campaign of Texas congressman Ron Paul is the textbook example of this concept in action.

While a Republican, Ron Paul's views are more in line with the Libertarian party. This fact alone places him on the fringe of political discourse. Still, there are well-respected libertarians out there, and certain libertarian ideas are appealing to large segments of society. In other words, libertarian politicians aren't always dismissed as nut-cases.

Ron Paul, however, was dismissed as a nutcase, and it wasn't just because of the candidate himself. Early on in his presidential bid, Ron Paul attracted a relatively small, but fanatically loyal core of followers. Most of them were nut-cases. About 50% of them were tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy freaks, 35% were angry students who didn't actually understand what Ron Paul stood for, 5% were members of the KKK, and 10% were normal people -- the least visible group of all. They began flooding YouTube, blogs, and internet forums, singing the praises of the infallible Paul, and attempting to overwhelm anyone who disagreed with a flurry of angry comments. And everywhere they went, these supporters mixed their support of Ron Paul with a heaping tablespoon of conspiratorial nonsense, paired with anti-establishmentarian raving.

Thrilled to have a following, Ron Paul embraced his loyal acolytes. His campaign became one of the most decentralized campaigns in history, totally depending on grassroots activists to spread his message. He raked in tons of money. He was in the lead in every Internet poll. And then, predictably, he lost.

He never had a chance in the first place, but Ron Paul's rabid fans didn't help. To everyone else on the Internet, they were "Paulbots", zealots who attempted to cram pro-Paul propaganda into every nook and cranny they could find. Some forum administrators got so sick of it that they started blocking Ron Paul supporters altogether. Every candidate has unsavory supporters, but these unsavory supporters were the core of Ron Paul's campaign. Everything was fueled by grassroots spontaneity -- a wonderful concept on paper, but something that can turn ugly when it completely replaces a focused campaign organization.

In recent months, some Barack Obama supporters have also crossed the thin boundary between enthusiastic and just-plain-crazy. The grassroots video below, created by will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame, is proof. "Yes We Can", an earlier pro-Obama video from the same source, was inspiring. This one is scary. Supporters describe the utopian dream of an Obama presidency, while repeatedly chanting O-ba-ma, in a fit of spiritual fervor brought on by the holy spirit of progress.



Again, this kind of thing excites voters who are already in the Obama camp, but everyone else sees it for what it is: another manifestation of the growing Obama personality cult. Obama's words may unite, but his fanatical supporters tend to leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Rational people know that a politician can't deliver the perfect society with a few pen-strokes. If this kind of worshipful behavior continues, it will only widen the gap between common-sense voters and Obama's nebulous campaign, a terrible liability in a race against John McCain -- the epitome of down-to-earth American spirit

Grassroots supporters are an essential part of American democracy; every campaign needs them in abundance. But when they take the spotlight from the campaign's official message, and become synonymous with the candidate himself, bad things can happen. Politicians can't solve our problems, or usher in an age of global tranquility. When the average voter sees a candidate surrounded by people who seem to think otherwise, they can get suspicious, and an otherwise decent message can be drowned out by a mob of political true-believers.

Hillary's Back! (kinda)

What Happened.

Last night, John McCain finally racked up enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination.

Neither of the Democratic candidates had such luck.

It was, of course, a fantastic night for Senator Hillary Clinton, who defied all expectations to win Texas and Ohio. But unfortunately for Hillary, the numbers are still against her.

After all the dust had settled, Hillary's victories in Ohio and Texas still left her over a hundred delegates short of overcoming Obama's commanding lead.

Hillary needed to win Ohio and Texas by huge margins in order to close the gap; ultimately, her margins just weren't big enough. Hillary's ten-point victory in Ohio was respectable enough, if not quite as impressive as the near 20-point victories Obama had earned in February, but her slim three-point lead in Texas was too weak to dent Obama's presidential prospects.

Now, both campaigns will be forced to dig in for a grueling, prolonged struggle that will come to a head in the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary.

Which candidate will benefit from this brutal, political trench-warfare?

Barack H. Obama.

As last night's final delegate tallies clearly showed, the lead Obama gained in February is going to be hard to beat. All Obama has to do from here on out is make sure most of the upcoming races are close, and his roughly 100 delegate lead will cushion him to a narrow victory. If Obama wins a fair amount of the upcoming contests, with decent margins, it will all be icing on his cake of electoral hope.

That is, unless the superdelegates decide to shake things up. Even if Obama retains his pledged-delegate lead at the end of all the primary contests, he still won't have the 2,025 delegates needed to completely secure the nomination. While most people expect the majority of superdelegates to side with the candidate who wins the overall popular vote, anything could potentially happen, especially if Obama's pledged-delegate lead becomes razor-thin.

However, the superdelegate factor could presumably work in Obama's favor. Party insiders tend to consider electability the paramount quality when selecting presidential candidates, and Obama is the only Democratic candidate who consistently beats John McCain in national polls. Hillary will need to improve her national standing against John McCain if she wants the superdelegates to throw their support behind her at the convention.

Why it Happened. (Probably)

Early this morning, The Politico's headline flaunted the conventional interpretation of last night's results:

"Clinton's Lesson: Attacking Obama Works".

Hillary Clinton's increasingly intense attacks on Obama may have had some impact on the election results, but let's be honest here: some of her attacks were pretty lame. Unless the residents of Ohio and Texas have a collective IQ of 42, I highly doubt that Hillary's laughable, oft-mocked "red phone" ad, and similar attacks, really tapped into the psyche of the voters in Tuesday's primaries.

Maybe they were simply sick of being told who was supposed to win.

It's a pattern that seems to be showing up frequently in the current Democratic presidential campaign; whenever a candidate is proclaimed inevitable by the media, a voter backlash occurs. We saw it in Iowa. We saw it in New Hampshire. Now we're seeing it again.

Being the underdog is often politically advantageous; in this case, it was. Obama's coronation was perceived as premature, and combined with his youth and alleged-inexperience, his aura of inevitable could have been interpreted as arrogance. Hillary may not always be the most likeable candidate, but her fall from grace helped win the sympathy of voters.

The media, with its typically soft coverage of Obama, and their endless stream of negative stories about Hillary, didn't help matters. Complaints of biased media coverage often make candidates look like pathetic, whiny losers. But in Hillary's case, her not-so-subtle claims of media bias actually resonated with voters, mainly because there was a great deal of truth to them. A surprise flurry of harsh questions directed towards Obama at a press conference on the eve of the primaries was unable to atone for the widely perceived slanting of election coverage.

In the end, the message was clear: voters will decide who gets the nomination, and the contest is far from over.