Manufactured Drama and the "Potomac Primaries"

No one doubted that yesterday's "Potomac Primaries" (Virginia, Maryland, and DC) would be important. Heck, given the wafter-thin delegate margin between Hillary and Obama, every state is taking on immense significance. But what was most interesting, to an enthusiast of the political theater that's playing itself out, is the degree to which the various media outlets are trying to manufacture drama to fill the gaps between actual news items.

McCain's win in Virginia (50-41% over Huckabee) is a prime example. The early returns, with just 10-15% of districts reporting, had Huckabee with a 4-point lead. Since the results were slow to come in during that first hour or so, the commentators had a lot of time to fill. They constantly gushed about what a blow it would be to McCain if Huckabee upset him here, how this was a sign that "conservatives" were rebelling against him, and how this was going to prevent McCain from launching into the national campaign he'd been looking forward to. Then, with about 20% of the vote in, the gap started to narrow. When it stood at 47-45 Huckabee, I caught Karl Rove on Fox News. He--and only he, at this point--spoke out against reading too much into these early results. He spoke a bit about McCain's campaign in Virginia and predicted that, by the end of the night, the senator would capture Virginia with 50 to 52% of the vote. And he was right.

This became clear at about 40% of the precincts reporting, but the narrative didn't change much: Huckabee still put up a stern resistance, a sign of McCain's weakness in the conservative base. Apparently, a 9% margin isn't big enough. If this had been a Presidential result, it would have been called a landslide.

The Obama/Clinton narrative was similarly flogged to death. There's been a good amount of fretting, in the public and in the media, about whether the news organizations are setting the story, rather than letting the facts speak for themselves. Well, duh. There's a need for drama, and the media fill every empty second with whatever drama they can scrape up. We hear about Obama's momentum (probably real enough), but less about the fact that the delegate count has what's effectively a microscopic edge for Obama. A Hillary sweep in big-ticket states like West Virginia and Wyoming would bring her back. Obama's not running the table...yet. The media just needs to polish its scripts so they can be ready when he is.