What happened last night?
I have a built-in bias against the usual explanations. Getting a grasp on the dynamics of a sprawling presidential campaign is like trying to predict the weather, before the advent of satellites and computer modeling.
There are in fact few visible manifestations of a presidential campaign: TV ads, stump speeches, dueling consultants. Most of the social, cultural and economic engines that drive voting decisions bubble beneath the surface.
Like tribal explanations for weather phenomenon, there is a tendency to ascribe cause and effect based on proximity of events. This is especially true among political reporters and TV people. The ads they run, the events they report, the insiders they talk to must be what propels voters: Muskie was sunk by his tears. Dukakis by Willie Horton. Kerry by Swift Boaters. Vast sociological storm systems reduced to a sound bite or a highlight reel.
That’s not to say that NAFTA or red phones or Farrakhan play no role, or that the rhetoric of the campaigns is just white noise. But it’s almost always far more complicated than what we see on our TVs.
Which is a long way of saying, I don’t know with any precision what happened last night.
What do you think?
We have an open thread set up at TPMCafe. Have at it.
