The “no-matter-what” Factor
World's October 20th issue features an article entitled "The 'no-matter-what' Factor", with the headline "Negative images may keep today's front runners out of the White House." The author of the article, Joel Belz, states that some voters, when asked to explain why they won't vote for a particular candidate, simply repeat the mantra, "No matter what..." Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is now the front-runner among presidential candidates, there are many who will absolutely not vote for her. When asked to explain, opposers rattle out: "No matter what, I will never vote for Hillary." This doesn't seem like too good of a rationale, but Belz writes that there may actually be hidden reasons as to why. It may be because she's a woman, because of her personality, because of who her husband is, etc., etc. There is a whole myriad of reasons why people wouldn't vote for Hillary, even though she has a fantastic campaign and her opponents are a little on the weak side. Belz also lists some reasons why young Barack Obama may not be the next leader of the USA. These listed negative traits are as follows: Youthfulness (lack of experience is not mentioned, but is one of the reasons that people say they wouldn't vote for Senator Obama), because his name sounds like the name "Osama bin Laden", and also because he would be the first African-American president. Though these are not very good reasons to deny a candidate a vote, the World reporter says that they're definitely there, whether or not anyone would like to admit it. The article goes on to list the negative traits of all other campaign runners. But since Clinton and Obama are the front runners, and are in fact the most competition for one another, in the campaign and in the Democratic party, the other contestants will be omitted from this particular article. The first paragraph of "The 'no-matter-what' Factor" says that though voters search for the best and most positive qualities in a candidate, the negatives tend to be more influential in our perception of a specific runner. The positives are important, of course, but the negatives are more so. A candidate can rise and rise in the ranks, but at a certain point, they will not be able to rise any higher, due to their negative image. Their negative image is the reason why a voter will not pledge their vote to a candidate: "No matter what..." And this is the reason negative images have the capacity to run the front runners right out of this race, and out of the White House.
Posted by on 11/07 at 02:20 PM