On electability

The Plaid Adder via Bob's Links and Rants

[T]he obsession with 'electability' short-circuits discussions of the issues by trapping the entire debate inside the repeating loop of a maddeningly self-fulfilling prophecy. Because of course if enough people believe a candidate is not electable, then they won't vote for that candidate, and consequently that candidate will become unelectable. What we won't ever know is whether that candidate could have been electable - indeed, elected - if instead of trying to pick a winner, people just picked the person who they actually wanted to have running the country.

'Electability' does not reside in a candidate's hairstyle, biography, accent, or platform; it is an airy nothing formed of pure perception which then becomes incarnated in reality because no matter how much we may criticize the national media we are all still their creatures. How else do we come by our perception of what the rest of our fellow-Americans want? We can't run our own polls; we can't call up people from Missoula to Miami and ask what they really want; we don't know from statistical sampling. It's the media, not the American people, who manufacture this national consensus that determines 'electability.'

...Now you can say that within the context of a primary fight, the focus on 'electability' is purely strategic - what after all is the good of picking a candidate that Bush will beat? What I am arguing is that if we are determining electability based on perceptions created by the mainstream media - as we inevitably are - then we are essentially allowing the corporations to pick our candidate for us. Money is what the media are loyal to; and my friends, money does not want a Democrat in the White House. You know that, I know that. We know that money does not have our best interests at heart. So when money tells us who's electable, why do we listen? Why is it so hard for us to remember that yes, money talks, but it does not tell the truth?