Win or Place, Obama Will Be Perceived as the Winner of the NH Primary

Barack Obama has surged to a 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton and is now the undisputed front-runner among Democrats in the New Hampshire Primary. Regardless of his actual finish after the ballots are counted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008, the media has already declared him the winner. Whether he places first or second, he will be declared the de facto winner of the New Hampshire primary and the nominee apparent of the Democratic Party.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson won the 1968 New Hampshire Primary on a write-in vote, but the strong second-place finish of Senator Eugene McCarthy led the press to declare that McCarthy was the actual winner of the content. Four years later, Senator Ed Muskie, the 1968 Democratic nominee for Vie President, placed first among Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, but the press determined that the true winner was George McGovern as he had finished a surprisingly strong second.
LBJ went on to drop out of the race for President and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the nomination for President but was beaten in November by Richard Nixon. In '72, Muskie -- widely perceived as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination -- floundered and McGovern took the prize, only to go down to defeat to Nixon that November.

Jimmy Carter won the New Hampshire primary in 1976 and '80, but in 1992, Bill Clinton's second-place finish behind former U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas (perceived as a "favorite son" as he hailed from neighboring Massachusetts) won him the self-bestowed moniker "The Comeback Kid." Clinton rode the tactical victory of his second-place finish in New Hampshire to the nomination and two terms as President.

Last year, the corporate mass media has declared Hilary Clinton the candidate to beat this primary season, and had all but conceded her the nomination before any votes had taken place, much as they now are proclaiming Obama the presumptive nominee after only the Iowa caucus. A first place finish would be sweet for Obama, and according to the press, would cement the nomination before the voters of the other 48 states even get a chance to cast a ballot. In the media's New Hampshire calculus, however, a second place finish will also be regarded as a win by the press, much as the places by McCarthy, McGovern and Clinton were perceived actually as wins., as Hillary still is the candidate to beat.

Barack Obama emerged as a darling of the media as soon as he won a seat in the U.S. Senate in November 2004. His victory quickly lead to two book deals and a great deal of publicity, which helped garner an unprecedented wave of support for such an inexperienced candidate when he threw his hat into the ring and declared for the Presidency. Tall, slim and possessed of good looks and a mellifluous speaking voice, Obama comes across extremely well on TV, the medium which has drive Presidential politics since at least the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon match-up, in which JFK earned on edge over his Republican rival due to his good looks and cool on-camera demeanor.

Media mega-star Oprah Winfrey, who had previously eschewed politics, endorsed Obama for President and even came to New Hampshire on December 9, 2007 to stage a rally at Manchester's $70-million Verizon Center. Home to the American Hockey League Eastern Division Champs The Monarchs, the Verizon Center is a non-union venue that the Obama campaign belatedly had to secure a union-waiver for, lest it invite picketing by disgruntled labor unionists and thus dampen the media-friendliness of the rally. The event was ticketed and quickly "sold out," though the ticketed multitude did not show up in toto. The two O's managed to pack the Verizon Center with 8,500 Oprah fans, Obama supporters, the curious, and random passersby plucked off the street as the doors were thrown open shortly before Oprah was set to hit the stage.

The Verizon Center seats 11,770 people for "center stage concerts." In its coverage of the December 9th tally, TIME Magazine reported that it was "about creating the kind of audacious political theater that makes supporters believe they're going to win, and casual observers into interested ones."

At a recent rally at Derry, New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy, Obama organizers prepped the long-lines waiting to enter the school's gymnasium with two "cheers" they were expected to parrot at the rally, Fire it Up! and Ready to Go! It was explained to those in line by the two organizer cum handlers, a middle-aged man and woman, that if we had been at the previous Obama rally, we knew what was expected of us. For us who were not following the Obama circuit, we were told the cheers and that their recitation would be expected of us in the gymnasium. It was very odd. It was evocative of the prepping of an audience at the taping of a situation comedy in Los Angeles, whose responses were tightly channeled, the audience expected to laugh on cue.

During the almost two-hour wait for the candidate, the cheerleaders would go around trying to fire up the crowd. A score of people were arranged on the dais with Obama signs in alternating blue and maroon, and were instructed how to behave. In contrast to recent John Edwards and Mike Huckabee rallies, in which the candidates walked after only a speech from a wife (Edwards) or local supporter (Huckabee), Obama's Derry rally seemed staged & controlled and lacking in spontaneity. It was very media-friendly, as everything was lined and ready for the dozen cameras on the platform facing the dais in the back of the gym.

Regardless of the origin of the crowd, it was huge and made for great imagery for the media. Obama's steady rise in the New Hampshire primary polls soon was to become meteoric.

Whether it is sustainable outside the controllable Iowa and New Hampshire markets, remains to be seen.