Super Tuesday’s results are in and once again the pollsters, pundits and pols got it wrong.  Months ago they were predicting the Republicans could go all the way to convention without a clear frontrunner, while the Democrats would know theirs by February 6th. Oops. John McCain, who the experts had pronounced dead just six months ago, has risen like Lazarus to all but seal the Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton, who they proclaimed Queen just six months ago, is now locked in a to-the-death struggle with Barak Obama over who gets to wear that crown.

Not only have the experts fumbled when picking candidates this time around, but their conventional campaign wisdom doesn’t seem so smart either.
For years they’ve told us there are certain immutable truths in American politics:

• That the candidate who has the most money wins
• That negative campaigning works
• That people vote for the candidate who panders
• That candidates should avoid getting pinned down on the issues

First, the money part. On the  Republican side, this time the guys doing the best are the ones with the least money. Romney may have saturated the airwaves and stuffed the mail boxes with literature, but it hasn’t translated into votes. The guy who’s beating him is Huckabee, who doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. As for frontrunner McCain, he didn’t start winning until he had lost all his money and started driving around in a second-hand Greyhound bus.

With the Democrats, Hillary’s early lock on the party’s major donors and fundraisers was thought to preclude any potential challenger getting traction. But Obama found new, first-time donors, and brought people into the political process that normally don’t give politicians the time of day.
Second, the claim that negative campaigning, while distasteful, is brutally effective. So far, wrong again. Obama, McCain and Huckabee have all sworn off negative campaigning.  Their aides aren’t slinking around dark alleys handing journalists unmarked manila envelopes filled with slime about their opponents. Yet Obama, McCain and Huckabee are the three candidates exceeding expectations. On the other hand, the more negative Romney and Clinton get, the more their supporters melt away.

Third, the experts argue that people vote for the candidate who panders to them. If that’s true, how do you explain the resurrection of John McCain?  When he was telling voters what they wanted to hear, they left him in droves. Once he started telling people what they didn’t  want to hear—that he would cut their favorite pork barrel projects, keep troops in Iraq, spend real money on alternative energies, and push for entitlement reform—they rallied to him. As for Obama, his biggest donors and most ardent supporters are the same guys he wants to tax to high heaven.

Fourth, don’t get specific on the issues. Political consultants warn their candidates not to go on the record with definitive stands on any controversial issues. Every time you come on clearly for or against something, you risk goring somebody’s ox, and making enemies.
So far, there has been something to that. The candidates doing better than expected are the ones who are strong on charm and soaring rhetoric but light on policy positions.

That will start to change, though, once the parties settle on their candidates. Why? Because there will be nothing left to talk about other than policy issues. In the last few months, we have seen an explosion in the number of election commentators, news producers and journalists. There is a whole new array of media superstars on network and cable news shows.

There are literally hundreds of pollsters, pundits, pols, journalists, news anchors, and traveling press corps employed full time covering the primaries and caucuses. So far there have been lots of candidates to cover, lots of stories to write, and lots of events to comment on. But now that the field is narrowing, what will happen to these guys? Remember, the general election is still nine months away. Do you really think they want to go back to covering Paris Hilton and Britney Spears?  Not a chance.  

We’re about to have the election that some of us have been dreaming about for years, where substantive issues get debated by serious candidates. And the media and the American public are fully engaged, the candidates with the most money aren’t necessarily the winners, and the politics of personal destruction don’t rule the day.

Turns out democracy isn’t dead after all; it just needed a transfusion.