Why did Gore and Kerry lose?

James Boyce has offered a clear analysis that agrees with the analysis of "Crashing the Gate." Essentially they each ran a 1970's TV-oriented campaign in a post-TV media world, depending on inside-the-beltway Democratic TV-oriented consultants.

This is an excellent article, published in "the Huffington Post" April 26th, and one I missed at the time.

I was thinking today that the Republicans run Presidential candidates using a "meta-message" that most of the issues and communications of the Republican Party as a whole are coordinated to add to. Things like the message that Bush is a straight-talking regular kind of guy who you would want to sit down a drink a beer with. Such a meta-message does not have to have every piece of news that appears in the media be favorable, since it depends on reaching the voter at a gut level rather than a rational one.

The Democratic TV consultants, in contrast, are each individual contractors who do not coordinate their messages. What they sell is an experienced TV "eye" that can advise a candidate how to avoid making mistakes that the opponents can take advantage of. It is my opinion that these consultants are as a group generally angry at the current blogosphere because it is not their familiar TV haunts and because they have no skill set with the blogosphere that they can sell that gets them new jobs and positions as close advisors to the candidates. This is a bigger threat to Democratic election consultants than losing elections has been.

Boyce make the interesting point that the Democrats have not actually elected a President since Carter. [Clinton had an unusual skill set that allowed him to override his consultants, plus he had Ross Perot in 1992 and the power of incumbency and the ability to set agendas in 1996.] Boyce's examples of how two consultants are proud that one of them stopped Gore from discussing the environment, on which he is passionate, and the other talked Kerry out of going after Bush on the war, something Kerry was passionate about. TV campaigns avoid passion. Modern voters consider it the essence of the reality of who a politician really is (the meta-message I was writing about earlier.)

This is really a set of ideas I am currently playing with, not a finished product. There is a body of knowledge about Democratic campaigns out there that I am working to understand, and this is a rough step in that direction. But I strongly recommend reading Boyce's article and "Crashing the Gate" (see right hand side of this magazine) to see what you think.