Obama, Hillary and….?
In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s announcement that she’s running for President, there has been another avalanche of articles on the competition to be the Democratic nominee in 2008. However, they all seem to think that there are only two candidates running, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Every other candidate is almost totally neglected. There are obvious reasons to do this, Obama and Clinton are the two most well known candidates and it’s always easier to boil things down to two options but the problem is that it’s a year out. Already just about every different branch of the media, from a major newspaper to a major blog to the BBC is making this a two-horse race. One can imagine that John Edwards must be completely exasperated. First, in 2004, (as detailed in this subscription only New Republic article) he and his inner circle believe that Howard Dean’s scream kept him from getting any media attention for his strong second place finish in Iowa. Now, the media is ignoring him because he doesn’t fit the plotline of the Hillary vs. Obama competition. But Edwards comes off relatively lightly compared to Tom Vilsack who will be very surprised to discover that his wife is a newspaper columnist named Ann according to this article in The Observer. And as for Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson (who is declaring his candidacy this morning on ABC’s This Week), the only way they can get any media attention right now is if they audition for American Idol. One hopes that this attempt to artificially narrow the field will not last long once the initial burst of attention for Clinton and Obama is past. Caucusgoers and primary voters deserve as many choices as possible and narrowing the field nearly a year before the first caucus is in no one’s interest.
5 comments January 21st, 2007
