Showdown in the Midwest: Why Iowa is CRUCIAL

Perhaps the biggest anomaly about the 2008 election is that there is no incumbent president or designated incumbent (Nixon, Ford, G.H.W. Bush, Gore) running for either party's nomination. Thus the media are going to have to cover two party presidential nomination fights at the same time.

The Gatekeepers are more powerful than ever before.

“Media coverage is the oxygen of politics”. Candidates who get media coverage can continue to raise money and candidates who don't get coverage can't usually disappear.

Because the news divisions are less and less profitable, the bias of the television media in 2008 will be to shut off as much oxygen to as many candidates as possible as soon as possible. Which is one reason we have the current coverage configuration, which implicitly states that (1) Clinton and Obama are the front-runners on the Democratic side, with Edwards as the wild-card position player (in Iowa) and (2) McCain and Giuliani are the front-runners on the Republican side, with Romney as the wild-card position player. Everyone else gets the multi-candidate forum coverage package and that's it. If they want day-to-day coverage, they can go generate local coverage. They're not in the national coverage budget.


Given this configuration, the name of the game for the front-runners is "shut off all the oxygen to everyone else early." Which, translated, means: win Iowa and New Hampshire, and the game is over. Lose those two states: it's time to start vying for the Vice Presidency or a Cabinet position.