June 08, 2007
Dodd: Take That, MSM!
It's customary for campaign underdogs to complain about things like being left out of polls, debates and press coverage. But with the 2008 election's accelerated primary schedule expected to heavily favor the big shots, the little guys are doing more than just complain when they feel slighted by The Man. They are taking matters into their own hands.
Last month, GOP businessman John Cox attempted to sue FOX News Channel and the South Carolina Republican Party over his exclusion from a televised primary debate. Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Mike Gravel, meanwhile, have managed to squeeze enough controversy out of their sparse debate appearances to become the favorite underdogs of their respective races. Anyone who has ever written anything less than favorable about either candidate knows that they command a rabid legion of fans on the Web.
And then there's Christopher Dodd. The senior senator from Connecticut had a fairly impressive first quarter (subscription) in terms of fundraising and has been trying to raise his profile through advertising. Still, Dodd has barely moved in the polls since entering the race and failed to make a splashy impression in the first couple of debates.
Now, frustrated by the format CNN adopted in the recent New Hampshire debates, the Dodd camp is hitting back with a new feature on its Web site.
The "Debate Talk Clock" tracks the amount of time each candidate in both the Democratic and Republican debates held this week was allowed to speak. Unlike previous debates in which the candidates were constrained by time limits, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer allowed candidates to speak for as long as he deemed necessary. The result, according to the Talk Clock's calculations, was a format that heavily favored the front-runners on both sides of the aisle.
For instance, compare the Talk Clock for Sunday's Democratic debate with NationalJournal.com's White House race rankings. The top three contenders -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards -- as determined by NBC News' Chuck Todd and the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, were all given the most time to speak in the debate (more than 10 minutes each). Second-tier players Dodd, Joseph Biden, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich were each allowed about eight to 10 minutes, and Gravel lagged far behind with five and a half (reinforcing the "potted plant" complaint he raised in the first debate).
In the spirit of bipartisanship, the Dodd camp released a second version of the clock on June 5, after the GOP New Hampshire debate. The results are largely the same (compare the graphic to the GOP rankings).
Campaigns & Elections magazine reported earlier this week that the clock has become a popular feature on the Web, "landing the site an estimated 20,000 hits and even spawning its own MySpace page."
On Dodd's Web site, campaign blogger Matt Browner-Hamlin promises "to make the Talk Clock available in the future for the interest of presenting a full exploration of today's pressing issues to the American people."
Somewhere, Ralph Nader is smiling.
Graphics courtesy of the Dodd campaign.
Posted at 1:30 PM
Posted to:
Campaigns, Christopher Dodd, Democrats, John Cox, Media, WH 2008
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