TomPaine.com - When is the Idea Primary?

[Mass]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/05/whens_the_idea_primary.php

When's The Idea Primary?
Robert L. Borosage
March 05, 2007

Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future.

Will Hillary apologize for her vote on Iraq? Will Obama disavow David Geffen's gibe at Bill's character? Should Edwards have hired and/or fired the blasphemous bloggers Swift-boated by the wing nuts of the right? Who can match Hillary's muscle and machine? Will Obama sweep the Facebook primary? The 2008 presidential election isn't for another 20 months, but coverage has already descended to tabloid sensation and horse-race handicapping.

...

Surely it is a time for vision, for bold ideas. Yet in the early days of this campaign, caution is the order of the day.
...

Regrettably, such caution reflects the Democratic consensus. Democrats have been in a defensive crouch since the Republicans, under Newt Gingrich, took control of Congress in 1994. Conventional Democrats now support spending more, not less, on the military, and want to add more troops better able to go more places and do more things. Few question our commitment to policing the world. Most are timorous about taxes. While public anger drives increasing concern about lost manufacturing jobs and immigration, Democrats offer no comprehensive alternatives. Bush has a failed agenda—top-end tax cuts and corporate trade policies—for economic growth. Democrats don't seem to have any strategy at all except fiscal restraint. In Washington, the reactionary excesses of Bush and the Republican Congress mask Democratic timidity. On the campaign trail, there is less cover.

In these early days of the campaign, voters and activists have begun to fill this vacuum, pushing candidates to be clearer and bolder. Antiwar sentiment has already moved the candidates to tougher positions on Iraq. Concern over health care has led Edwards to advocate a strong universal coverage plan. Hillary started with a pledge to cover all children, and Obama with an emphasis on technology and prevention, but both now pledge to reach universal health care by the end of the first term (Obama) or second (Hillary, with characteristic caution). The overwhelming popularity of energy independence and the Apollo message—creating jobs by putting resources into alternative energy and energy efficiency—ensures that this defining issue is trumpeted, at least rhetorically, by all.

Activists, particularly in the early primary states, should continue to demand more. We need a debate on fundamentals: on our global strategy, our imperial commitments, our trade and investment policies, on how to make this economy work for working people, on how to meet threats, from Al Qaeda to climate change. We need that debate now, in 2007, during what should be the "idea primary." We need the next President to win not just a majority but a mandate.

From the March 19, 2007 issue of The Nation

[KingofNewOrleans]

1. Edwards has mailed out 70,000 dvds

of his healthcare plan to likely Iowa caucus goers

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/2976.html

The linked article also provides a link to the video.

So, i guess the idea campaign has started.

[Mass]

2. Only if the ideas can pierce thru the media noise.

I googled Edwards earlier today. The two dominant stories are:

http://www.businessportal24.com/en/Edwards_Camp_Capitalizes_Coulter_Slur_142741.html
Edwards Camp Capitalizes on Coulter Slur (vaguely negative on Edwards)

And

http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=6179140&nav=1sW7
Edwards sends 70,000 DVDs to Iowa voters

Focusing largely on the process (sending the DVDs) and not the content (How the plan will or will not help).

As long as the narrative will focus on the process and not the substance, the idea primary will not happen, even if candidates have good ideas. We need to be able to compare them and to participate in the debate, and this is clearly not happening at this stage.

[KingofNewOrleans]

3. Well on a local scale they can.

Ideas can be taken to the retail level (the voters don't require MSM to watch the DVD) in early primaries like Iowa and NH. Once you get beyond that (and especially given the 20 state primary of Feb 5th, including California and Florida) it quickly becomes a wholesale marketplace and ideas get wrapped in pretty packaging for mass consumption--not to say that Iowa and NH get the unvarnished truth but they do provide the opportunity for candidates to discuss and promote their ideas in a manner impossible in bigger states or mass primaries. It's probably the best argument for having small (and even experienced) states start off the nomination process.

While you focus on the process, the people in Iowa can actually focus on the DVD.