Opinion: Running for president without the big name
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Sen. Chris Dodd is struggling in the Democratic presidential race but fighting on gamely.
It’s a political problem shared by all the second-tier candidates in both parties. The media and crowds tend to follow the frontrunners, and their rhetorical barrages suck up all the publicity oxygen. Over the holiday, for instance, Americans heard (and no doubt read here) plenty about Bill and Hillary in Iowa. Hard for many Americans to know but, by the way, Mitt Romney marched in that same Clear Lake parade that seemed to revolve around the New Yorkers.
Entire squads of campaign staffers are assigned to game these continuous publicity struggles, to highlight their candidate’s activities and to step on opponents’ events. Not accidentally, for instance, in the battle for attention the Clintons’ joint Iowa appearances brought a quick end to all the stories about Barack Obama’s fundraising success.
So to regain attention the Illinois senator launched a shot about his campaign looking forward and not backward, meaning not at yet another Clinton administration.
The result of all this was....
...little attention lavished on the Tommy Thompsons, Mike Huckabees and Chris Dodds of the very same race. Though few know about it, Dodd is on a cross-state so-called River to River bus tour of Iowa these days.
A recent Associated Press story chronicles many of the white-haired Dodd’s difficulties--his modest fundraising ($7.3 million this year with $6.5 million still on hand), his one per cent standing in state polls, his ardent Iraq war opposition overshadowed by Obama’s. When Dodd brought his two young daughters on the trail, John Edwards did too and they got the media attention. Even his 26 years in the Senate don’t seem to count for much in a campaign so desperately discussing change. But Dodd and his staff, many from the 2004 Howard Dean campaign that later imploded in anger, labor on.
In a revealing email to supporters this week, Dodd sends thanks for the donations, then adds, ‘despite our impressive fundraising efforts over the past six months, we need to consider new and innovative ways to get our message of bold ideas and proven leadership out to Democratic primary voters.’
The new idea is called D-TV. It’s much more aggressive use of video on the Dodd website. They’re running four different channels, some showing past appearances on this tour, others live-streaming events happening right now. There are also live video chats and on-camera segments of staff at campaign headquarters.
Dodd adds in a kind of grandfatherly way, ‘Running for President is a lot of work, but participating in live-video chats and unscripted behind-the-scenes video segments for YouTube have been a pleasantly rewarding surprise in our journey so far.’
They can be entertaining like some of the over-the-shoulder tapes on C-SPAN’s Road to the White House. And it does fit the beachcombing serendipity of the web; you never know what’s going to pop up next so you keep looking.
True, second-tier candidates don’t have to actually win the Iowa caucuses. They just have to do better than expected, whatever that means. But whether four new channels of summer video will provide sufficient motivation for enough Dodd supporters to go out on a cold winter’s night next January remains to be seen.
--Andrew Malcolm