So, Gephardt, the completely hopeless candidate. In the last post, we got the early-polls issue out of the way. Now a few more words from fellow Salon blogger Robert--in response to my Speaking of Unelectable post, then on to the real story of Gephardt The Amazing Loser. (For context, I'm repeating Robert's first two lines, already quoted in the last post):

I am not a fan of Gephardt either, but it's too early to assign him to the dustbin of history.

He's still polling well, among the top four.

Still, you have a point. I also highly doubt that he'll get the nomination. People, I think, are sick of the same old names and faces, especially Gephardt's and Lieberman's and even to some extent, I suspect, Bob Graham's.

They want fresher candidates, which is why I think it's going to come down to Dean and Kerry. (Edwards is a fresher face, too, but he isn't polling well at all, and for all of the money he's raised, you never hear about his campaign. He's not getting the word out -- or at least it's not reaching us here on the Left Coast.) ...

[Robert continues about other candidates. Read the rest here if you like.]

Some interesting ideas there. I think Robert's onto something, but he's using that standard "fresher face" phrase which I think is getting very close to the core issue, but actually serves to obscure what's really going on.

In the last post, I pointed out problems particular to assessing the numbers of limited-appeal candidates like Gephardt. But that was the flaw in sizing up his chances the first time. This time it's much easier. We've seen him already. Rejected him bigtime in 1988. He's the same guy. We don't like him. What does it take for some people to get the message?

I think people do enjoy fresh faces, just as we enjoy fresh faces in Hollywood. Either way, though I think freshness generally pales in the face of established star power. Colin Farrell is up and coming and ten times hotter than Tom Cruise and generating all the buzz. Great, that's really something for Colin, and for pale, dejected, angry young Irishmen everywhere.  But there's no question of who's going to open the picture and who's going to take the supporting role.

Just another way Washington plays out just like Hollywood. (Doesn't everything in America play out just like Hollywood? That's why it Hollywood is not Paducah. One exists exclusively to reflect the culture, one exists to . . . raise hillbillys or prairiebillies, or whatever flavor of cornfeds they're producing down in Kentucky these days.)

It's easy to draw a freshness conclusion from the success of so many recent first-timers for president: George W, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter . . . George Senior almost pulled it off as a newbie the first time in 1980, and relative to a sitting pres, Ronald Reagan was pretty fresh to most of the public. But is freshness what's really going on?

I think it's less about fresh faces than good faces. Good in the eventual minds of the voters, of course. And it's impossible to tell at this point who the voters will rank as good, but we've got a damn good idea who they'll rank as bad! We, the voters have already rated Gephardt.  We hated him. He hasn't changed. We have, but in the opposite direction. We hate you Dick Gephardt and we always will! Stop calling us, you freaking stalker!

John Kerry, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and most of the rest this time, are guys we're still considering for the first date. Very few first dates lead to marriage, but the great thing about a first date--about the only thing going for a first date, the force that drives us singles back into that torture chamber again and again despite the obvious horrors of the experience--is that the one thing a first date offers is unlimited possibility. Could be love at first sight. Could be the start of something beautiful. At least there's always hope.

Dick Gephardt is the guy we dated for six months twelve years ago, and we didn't just reject him, we sneered at him, humiliated him, buried him deep in the back of the motley suitor pack. And here he comes again. Time to alert the authorities. Time to get a restraining order.

Seriously. Is that so hard for him to see? For the morons in the newsrooms to see?

I'm not saying no one should ever run again. We did not reject John McCain out of hand. We just went for the rich guy. Sorry John, Shrub already had ($70?) million in the bank before we ever met you. Our heart was with you, but we married for money. And regret it now. John could easily come back. There was real promise there. We know him now, and we've gotten closer than ever since we've dated. We're really hoping he asks us again. (I'm speaking for the public in general with all the we's. That's how I read us.)

Gary Hart had a chance for a second run too, though he blew that for completely different reasons. We didn't completely fall in love with Gary the first time, but he definitely established a connection. There was heavy flirting there, there was a real spark that might have erupted and still could. Gary wasn't quite ready though, called us up a little too early, a little too young, so it made sense to try again four years later. Plus, he in way over his head the first time, with another damn VP candidate with more money and more importantly, more muscle. We went for the muscle dude that time. (And we're talking Mondale now, if memory is failing you.) We, the Democrats, really regretted going for brawn, because he it did us no good, he never managed to muscle into the White House. Hart had two realistic reasons for trying a second time; either one would have warranted a another go. 

Losing an election campaign doesn't always mean the public will hate you forever. Just usually.

It's not that Dick Gephard's face isn't fresh. If he had stayed out in 1988, would he stand a better chance just because his allotment of freshness had not been entirely consumed? No way. He would fall just as flat on his face if we were seeing it for the first time. For the same reasons he tumbled the first time. This fresh-face analysis always suggests the prior runs as the cause of the freshness problem. It's not the cause, merely the indication.

The cause and effect thing, that's one of the easiest mistakes to make observing at human experience. So hard to tell the difference sometimes, and causality always looks to appealing. The data always seems to support it. Of course it does: you're running the same experiment over and over again, of course you're going to get the same result. That doesn't mean the first experiment caused the results of the second one, though it may look that way from the inside of the test tube.

One thing is pretty clear. We've dated Dick Gephardt already. Still coming after us 16 years later and you're nothing but a stalker.

This discussion began as a comment in my post on Gephardt's meager appeal yesterday, Speaking of Unelectable. But the comments are not so visible in this Radio system I'm using (sorry about that), and I thought this was worthy of a more visible discussion, so I'm bringing it up here, and expanding on it.

Robert writes:

I am not a fan of Gephardt either, but it's too early to assign him to the dustbin of history.

He's still polling well, among the top four.

Read the rest here if you like. More from Robert in the next post (above), but first let's address that slippery polling data:

Polls are very useful indicators as elections approach. (With several reservations--see the * at the bottom of this post.) But more than a year before an election (or even months before a primary), they're a whole different ballgame. And I think we can talk about them anyway we want in blogs, but the press has different responsibilities, and frankly, I think they're grossly irresponsible in how they report them. What a surprise.

At this point, polls mostly measure name recognition. A more revealing poll was the one a few weeks ago that said only (a third?) of voters could name ANY Dem candidate. It amazes me that the press can report with a straight face that hardly anyone in the country is paying attention yet, but here are the numbers on who's ahead anyway. What?

Still, with a good eye, you can learn a lot of things, many of which Robert pointed out, and does more thoroughly here. (He also provides much more polling data there, from multiple sources, across several months. Good summary of that data, Robert.) In general, changes in your numbers are much more important than the totals. (Of course the press reports them the other way around. Bozos.) If Edwards, Kucinich, Kerry and Dean were all nobodies to most of the public in January, and still are to most people now, but the last two have risen dramatically in the polls, while Edwards and Kucinich have not, that could be a big inidcation for all four. (Same for the clear also-rans.)

But you have to be fair to Edwards. He's been mostly raising money all year, not campaigning, so numbers alone are pretty misleading. Kucinich can't say the same.

And the fact that Kerry's recognition was considerably higher than Dean's in their relative proportions toward the zero end of the scale means that Dean's rise is a bit more impressive than Kerry's. But just a bit.

But it gets trickier. It's natural for Lieb to lose relative support as the name recognition of others rises somewhat toward him. But his drop is WAY more than the relative change in name recognition, and polls show him now well behind the others, despite much higher name recognition, so that really is a bad sign for him.

And the problem with all of this is that it's a very particular segment of the population where all this movement is occurring. It's only the political junkies like us who are paying attention, and we're not necessarily representative. Anyone who knows politics will tell you that Dean's relative surge in the numbers has been dramatic, and would clearly shoot him to the top if it continued indefinitely. But that's a huge if. We know Dean has electrified a certain subpopulation, the question is whether they're indicative of the country, or indicative only themselves, and they've already gathered most of the interested bodies they're ever going to get.

I'm betting against that scenario with Dean, but it's exactly what happens to lots of candidates, including Gephardt twice already. He had a core group of labor and hardcore old-school liberals who signed up to support him early, so he looked great in the beginning, but never built on it. He's a 5-15% man: he'll have 5-15% at the beginning, and 5-15 at the end, except that a lot of those who would be in the 5-15 will eventually go with their second choice as he loses viability, so he'll appear to have even less. Complicating his numbers even more is his regional appeal. He always does great in neighboring Iowa, the first state to go to the polls which influences everything. That one really fools the press. Every time.

I think the polls in Iowa and NH are much more reliable indicators, because the process begins MUCH earlier, it's much more retail level, the candidates have much more visibility, and the people there know they have a different role. There, people have increasingly met the candidates, and so it's a much better gauge--if you factor out the unique demos/characters of those places. For starters, Kerry and Dean have a big advantage in NH, being from neighboring states, and Gephardt in IA. Kerry most of all. He's been spending millions on Boston TV ads for years, that go into a lot of NH homes. But the fact that the New Englanders are challenging Gephardt in Iowa, and the reverse is not happening in NH tells you something.

So there's some useful information here, and any strategist would be a fool not to read them with a careful eye to what's going on. But this media reporting of who's ahead, is just retarded. And irresponsible. That's what keeps sticking us with losers like Al Gore. And presumably Hillary Clinton in four years. She's be way ahead of the pack at 20-30 percent while everyone else is in single digits, and that will be because even people in remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa have heard of her, and some naturally like her, while only one percent of the population of Chicago or LA will be able to distinguish that year's John Kerry or Howard Dean from the weatherman in Peoria. But they'll report that she's way out ahead, and tag her Frontrunner because of it, and give her all attention so awareness of her ideas grows even higher and . . .

Asswipes.

* Polls get much more reliable as an election approaches, and the guy who's 20 points behind a week before election day who swears polls mean nothing is just the big liar he looks like. But the press abuses them in another way then, making the campaign entirely into a horse race, and it all becomes "who's popular." That's a topic for its own day.

** Even late polls lost a lot of cred the last few electiong, apparently because with telemarketing overload, the percent of people willing to talk has plumeted, and therefore results are skewed toward more fervent supporters. It will be interesting to see how the new Do Not Call lists will affect that.