I definitely heard activists referring to policy differences like this when talking to people about their choice of candidate, but as far as I can tell these were rarely the points which convinced anyone to pick one candidate over another. Everyone who picked a candidate still preferred at least some policy positions from some of the others; they picked based on an overall sense of who was best, in terms of things like strategy, overall depth, the direction of the candidate's overall campaign, etc. Then they might tell people about specific policy details, but that was an ineffective campaigning method (which isn't to say it wasn't a useful thing to do - it was useful - it just wasn't the thing that moved people in their decisions of who to support).
Personally, I felt that Edwards had the best health care proposals, and even though I supported Obama, I was hoping that whoever won (either he or Clinton) could be gotten to propose something like Edwards'. I also figured that the real details of health care reform would be more up to Ted Kennedy than any of the candidates, so I was counting on him to write good legislation, and on the president to provide the leadership to make sure Congress actually did something. Although unfortunately Kennedy hasn't been able to do the hard work due to his cancer, it's still true that the details are mostly up to Congress, and I'm also quite glad that Obama mostly adopted Edwards' outline in what he asked Congress to do.
P.S. In case it's not clear, I very strongly disagree with your assessment that this disagreement on the mandate had much to do with how much support each candidate got. However early you may have noticed it, hardly any voters were likely to be aware of it before Super Tuesday, and even in March when they would've been aware of it, I'm quite confident that it had a small, probably negligible, effect on voting patterns. Though it might've been something more people used to explain their voting preferences, by then.
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momijizukamori
Re: wording & framing
Date: 2009-08-25 19:35 (UTC)I definitely heard activists referring to policy differences like this when talking to people about their choice of candidate, but as far as I can tell these were rarely the points which convinced anyone to pick one candidate over another. Everyone who picked a candidate still preferred at least some policy positions from some of the others; they picked based on an overall sense of who was best, in terms of things like strategy, overall depth, the direction of the candidate's overall campaign, etc. Then they might tell people about specific policy details, but that was an ineffective campaigning method (which isn't to say it wasn't a useful thing to do - it was useful - it just wasn't the thing that moved people in their decisions of who to support).
Personally, I felt that Edwards had the best health care proposals, and even though I supported Obama, I was hoping that whoever won (either he or Clinton) could be gotten to propose something like Edwards'. I also figured that the real details of health care reform would be more up to Ted Kennedy than any of the candidates, so I was counting on him to write good legislation, and on the president to provide the leadership to make sure Congress actually did something. Although unfortunately Kennedy hasn't been able to do the hard work due to his cancer, it's still true that the details are mostly up to Congress, and I'm also quite glad that Obama mostly adopted Edwards' outline in what he asked Congress to do.
P.S. In case it's not clear, I very strongly disagree with your assessment that this disagreement on the mandate had much to do with how much support each candidate got. However early you may have noticed it, hardly any voters were likely to be aware of it before Super Tuesday, and even in March when they would've been aware of it, I'm quite confident that it had a small, probably negligible, effect on voting patterns. Though it might've been something more people used to explain their voting preferences, by then.