An Earlier Start
One change in timing is straightforward and had been much reported: Candidates’ serious and visible campaigning for presidential nominations was well under way by the beginning of 2007, a full calendar year before delegate selection processes were scheduled to begin early in the presidential election year of 2008. All sorts of activities associated with candidates’ attempts to win their parties’ nominations have been occurring earlier than in preceding nomination cycles.
Some candidates seeking to be elected president in 2008 declared their candidacies in late 2006. For example, former two-term Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, more than a political nonentity but less than a putative front-runner in the Democratic party’s 2008 presidential nomination competition, announced his candidacy in November 2006 and officially withdrew on 23 February 2007. On the other hand, former Senator Fred Thompson, whose name surfaced as a potentially formidable candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the first half of 2007, delayed formal announcement of his candidacy until early September. Commentators wondered why he had waited so long to announce and whether it was too late. Major Democratic contenders John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and major Republican contenders Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain all announced their candidacies before March 2007.
Nationally televised debates among Republican and Democratic candidates were in full swing during the first half of 2007. By the summer of 2007, a half-dozen among Republican candidates and another half-dozen among Democratic candidates had been aired, with a similar number scheduled to occur in the second half of the year. Six to nine candidates participated in each of these events, which varied in sponsorship (from television stations to labor unions to Howard University) and format ( from a single moderator to CNN’s Youtube -based venture).
Finally, news media provided extensive coverage of nomination campaigns and the like during the period that used to be called the “invisible primary”. Candidates’ debate performances, poll results, policy positions, campaign fund-raising efforts, and other “horse race” aspects of the campaign were reported, and systematic comparisons of candidates’ proposals on issues such as the Iraq war and health of 2007, The New York Times conducted interviews with voters across the United States and reported that they were unusually engaged by the early campaigning as well as “flinching at the onslaught of this early politicking”.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
