Voice of the Mid-Columbia | Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Wash. |
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Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly. |
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closeOne of the most amusing tradition in politics is to watch candidates who’ve tried to convince anyone who will listen that their campaign is steamrolling its way to victory suddenly have to explain dismal poll or primary results.
Often they’ll find a way to spin it by reconstructing history to make the present look better. They’ll say that we’ve got it all wrong and that their horrific showing actually was far better than expected. They’ll say how their seemingly deplorable numbers actually demonstrate how much momentum they’ve built since the gloomy day they announced their campaign (with the balloons and streamers and bold predictions and so on and so forth).
It usually sounds downright preposterous.
And with that we mention that independent presidential hopeful Ralph Nader’s campaign, which has now qualified to be on the Washington ballot, has been touting a nationwide CNN poll in which he got 6 percent.
That sounds like a dismal showing not at all worth putting in a press release. What’s different is that Nader doesn’t pretend it isn’t and lays out a pathway for how his campaign could become more viable.
“The campaign’s goal of course is much higher,” a recent press release read.
The campaign hopes to get to 10 percent to improve Nader’s chances of being invited to debates where he would stand a chance to improve his standing again.
It’s a bit of a stretch. But it also doesn’t require revisionist history to make his prospects look rosy today.
And it’s a better explanation than the ones you’ll hear in August when candidates up and down the ballot who’ve been building themselves up find themselves trying to polish crappy results from the state primary.
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