First Mark Penn gave us Microtrends, his methodologically-unsound book on the "small forces behind tomorrows big changes." Today, Hillary Clinton is trying "microcampaigning." Her events are full of microanswers. She's running the microcandidacy. Attending last night's Clinton rally, Harold noted the same bizarre rudderlessness I'd seen the day before. "Missing was a theme, an emphasis, a sorting of priorities, a touch of context, some urgency, a larger raison d'etre, a grand -- dare we say, presidential -- purpose," he writes. Another reporter friend of mine, attending yet a third Hillary event, scrawled in big letters in his notepad, "SHE HAS NO MESSAGE." Microtrends was premised on the idea that we are now a country of niches. We aren't One Nation, Under His Noodly Appendage so much as we are Soccer Moms and Office Park Dads and Ardent Amazons and Aspiring Snipers and Late-Breaking Gays. We are, in other words, a collection of small groups, and small groups require a small politics -- a politics not of purpose or grand narrative, but of discrete policy proposals and bite-sized legislative innovations. As Mark Schmitt writes, Penn's "modus operandi has been to announce that some vaguely defined sub-category is the key to the electorate -- soccer moms, office park dads, or the even more dubious “Archery Moms” and “Ardent Amazons” of his new book -- then design a centrist, cautious politics to appeal to that key group." But there's no key group in a primary. Since you don't have the Democratic base already on your side, you can't identify the Cabinet Constructors or Ikea obsessives who will provide that critical three percent boost. So rather than identifying one key group and constructing a campaign around their votes, Clinton has been treating the electorate as a loose collection of key groups, and devoting her campaign to taking enough questions that every single sub-demographic gets the answer they're waiting for. But when you're running to win over one key group, you at least have a message, a focus. When you're running to win all of them over individually, you have, by definition, no message. Some want change, some want experience, some want populism, some want moderation, some want hawkishness, some want health care reform, and some dont even know what they want. So the campaign has no message, only answers on each of these topics, answers which never stray from the specific issue at hand and don't dare wander into grander themes or ideas that could turn off another key group. It's made for rallies devoid of energy or enthusiasm. As one reporter said to me the other night, there are times when it feels like the Clinton Campaign is becoming a Microtrend.
