The art of spin: Pulling victory from New Hampshire’s jaws of defeat

Tuesday night at around 8:30, as the New Hampshire primary returns were still coming in, an aide to Jeb Bush told CNN that the former Florida governor’s double-digit percentage showing amounted to “something of a win already.” Bush ended up finishing fourth, more than 20 points behind the GOP winner Donald Trump.
When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was projected to lose her race against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a Clinton supporter, pointed out that New Hampshire is 2 percent African-American and 1 percent Latino — unlike the key states ahead.

And in the coming days, the spinning of the New Hampshire primary results is sure to intensify. After all, spinning results and resetting expectations is a quadrennial New Hampshire ritual as venerable as town hall meetings and drinks at the Wayfarer Inn.

Senator Eugene McCarthy at a news conference, 1968. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

In the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary, President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated challenger Senator Eugene McCarthy, who was voicing the public frustration with LBJ’s continued prosecution of the Vietnam War. Yet, McCarthy’s strong second-place finish so fatally weakened the incumbent president that Johnson swiftly chose to withdraw from the race.
Four years later, Senator Ed Muskie, the liberal Democratic front-runner, beat Senator George McGovern, who was allied with the party’s left-wing. But Muskie’s slimmer-than-expected margin of victory in New Hampshire hurt his candidacy and helped his rival’s.
Ever since, the New Hampshire primary “winner” has been determined not just by the electorate but by what the political journalist Hendrik Hertzberg dubbed the “expectorate.”
So candidates spend each primary night spinning frantically to show that they’ve met or exceeded expectations. Though it’s easy to laugh at the candidates’ chutzpah as they try to spin a third-place showing into a big night, for example, or a razor-thin win into a cakewalk, the dirty little secret is that post-primary spin only works when the candidate has a legitimate case to make, when there’s a sizable kernel of truth underneath the rhetorical froth.

Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton at a campaign rally in Jackson, Mississippi, October 28, 1992. REUTERS/Archive

Bill Clinton did it best, as usual, when in 1992 he parlayed a second-place finish in the New Hampshire Democratic primary into front-runner status as the “Comeback Kid.” And this was actually true. Clinton, a relatively little-known Arkansas governor, had been pummeled in the media for weeks because of an alleged extramarital affair and his avoidance of combat in Vietnam. So Clinton had indeed bounced back — to finish close behind Senator Paul Tsongas, of neighboring Massachusetts. A drubbing would have made his subsequent campaign much harder.
Strong contenders can sometimes get the news media to accept the way they frame the New Hampshire results, even if it’s self-serving. In 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale, upset by Senator Gary Hart, rationalized, “What happened was that here in New Hampshire, the voters decided they didn’t want the debate to end.” Texas Governor George W. Bush, stunned by Senator John McCain’s 2000 New Hampshire triumph, insisted, “He spent more time in this great state than any of the other candidates, and it paid off.” Neither man was wrong.
On the other hand, a weak finisher’s spin is usually — and rightly — mocked. In 2004, placing fifth in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Senator Joe Lieberman ludicrously crowed about his “three-way split decision for third place.” He ended his campaign a week later.
Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, finishing third in the 1996 New Hampshire Republican primary behind front-runner Senator Bob Dole and the surprise victor Patrick J. Buchanan, disingenuously proposed, “Why doesn’t Senator Dole step over to the side and let Pat and me have a contest of ideas?” Alexander himself stepped aside soon after.

Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan near the end of the presidential debate at Arizona State University, February 22, 1996. REUTERS/Archive

The worst spin typically comes from sore losers. Even as Trump was headed for a win in New Hampshire, he did not give up on his charges from last week that Senator Ted Cruz stole the Iowa caucus from him. But Trump was downright sportsmanlike compared to Senator Bob Dole who, after losing to Vice President George H.W. Bush in New Hampshire in 1988, told a reporter, “Tell him to stop lying about my record.” Bush didn’t stop, and Dole didn’t do much better in the ensuing contests.
This suggests that we needn’t be too cynical about the primary-night sound bites hurtling our way.
Virtually every theorist of spin — or propaganda, or publicity or whatever the dark art has been known as over the decades — agrees that effective messages don’t persuade us of things we didn’t believe before. Rather, they resonate with and amplify notions we’re already inclined to put stock in. “Propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds,” explained the author Eric Hoffer in the 1950s; “neither can it inculcate something wholly new. … Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already ‘know.’ ”
Our everyday human skepticism helps us sift the reasonable claims from the absurd. Spin that’s egregiously self-serving or too detached from reality to be plausible is usually identified by the press and the public as such. Arguments that make sense, we take seriously.
New Hampshire’s failure to impose any clear resolution on this year’s nomination races means that South Carolina, Nevada and the Super Tuesday states will take on greater importance in choosing the nominee. And it thereby ensures another month of audacious spin.

Electability, schmelectability: It’s the year of the angry, angry voter

 

New Hampshire is supposed to clarify things. It didn’t. What New Hampshire did this year was make the political situation in both parties a whole lot murkier.
The winners of both primaries were candidates who are widely seen as unelectable.  New Hampshire Democrats went for a socialist. New Hampshire Republicans picked a demagogue.
What we saw in New Hampshire was a massive vote for change. But here’s the thing: Voters went for change in two completely different directions. That does not bode well for bringing the country together.
Republicans are moving to the right and Democrats to the left. This year, 71 percent of New Hampshire Republican primary voters called themselves conservatives, up from 53 percent four years ago. On the Democratic side, liberals went from 56 percent in 2008, the last time there was a competitive Democratic primary, to 69 percent this year. The distance between the two parties is getting wider. That’s a formula for more gridlock.
Barack Obama was wrong in 2004 when he said, “There is no liberal America and no conservative America.”  Republicans are Democrats are living in two different worlds. Among New Hampshire Republican voters on Tuesday, 59 percent said they were “very worried” about a major terrorist attack in the United States. And among Democrats?  Just 22 percent were “very worried” about terrorism.

Donald Trump gestures during his victory speech as his wife Melania, looks on at his New Hampshire primary night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, February 9, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

Donald Trump’s resounding victory — he got more than twice as many votes as any other Republican — was not driven by conservative ideology. Trump did carry conservatives, but he also carried  moderates, women, young people, independents — every type  of Republican voter.
What drove the Trump vote was anger. The angrier you were with the federal government, the more you voted for Trump. Forty  percent of Republican primary voters described themselves as “angry” over the way the federal government is working.
There are many sources of anger in the Republican Party. Some of it is conservatives who hate Obama’s big government liberalism, epitomized by Obamacare. Some of it is people who are hurting economically. Trump did best among voters who said they were falling further behind financially.
Some of it was also rage over the cultural and demographic changes happening in the United States. That rage is greatest among less-educated white voters, who feel they are being pushed aside. Trump got twice as much support from Republican voters who didn’t go to college (46 percent) than he did from voters with post-graduate degrees (23 percent).
Many working-class white voters feel embittered toward the whole political establishment.  Nearly half of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire said they felt betrayed by Republican politicians.

Bernie Sanders gestures during a rally at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, February 8, 2016. – RTX260V1

Democrats are also facing a revolt. But this one is coming from the left. Only 40 percent of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters said they wanted the next president to continue Obama’s policies. Forty-two percent wanted the next president to move in a more liberal direction.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has become the candidate of the status quo. She may have run against Obama eight years ago, but now she is thoroughly identified with his policies. What kinds of Democrats are unhappy with the status quo? Liberals.  Young people. People who feel they are falling behind financially. All of them voted overwhelmingly for Sanders.  So did the more than 60 percent of Democrats who said that they, too, are dissatisfied or angry with the way the federal government is working.
In 2008,  Democrats who were hurting in President George W. Bush’s economy went for Clinton over Obama. The economy was Clinton’s  issue, and she used it to win a surprise victory over Obama in the 2008 New Hampshire primary.  – The economy is not her issue any more.  Democrats who said they were very worried about the economy voted overwhelmingly for Sanders.
Insiders in both parties are trying to reassure themselves that, over the course of the campaign, voters will come to their senses and nominate more electable contenders. That may not be so easy, however.
Republicans who want to stop Trump can’t seem to come together. Conservatives are rallying behind Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who may be even less electable than Trump.  Mainstream Republicans can’t agree on who will be their champion. Last week,  after Senator Marco Rubio of Florida did better than expected in Iowa, he was the Republican “It Boy.”  This week the title goes to  Ohio Governor John Kasich, who did better than expected in New Hampshire (he came in second). If happiness in politics is a divided opposition, then Trump must be pretty happy right now.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s liabilities are becoming ever more apparent. Most voters don’t think she is honest and trustworthy. She has the image of political calculation. Republicans will claim that a vote for Clinton is a vote for a third term for Obama — and that is exactly what it looks like to many Democrats.

Only one in eight voters — in both parties — said they were voting for a candidate who could win in November. The message of New Hampshire was, “To hell with electability.  We want candidates who will shake things up.”
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