Because I try to be a good little citizen of the world, I've been trying to keep on top of the Democratic primaries in the US. (This on top of reading Bush's speeches. See what I go through for you guys?) Anyway, I was checking the New Hampshire primary and noticed something odd about the articles lately. It turned out that CNN was trying to use a new buzzword again. Every so often they try that; they pick some poorly-defined or generally silly concept ("embedded reporters," "shock and awe," "white powder," and so on), and try to see how many times they can use it per minute. You can tell when they find something that they like, because you start wondering if your television or web browser has a skip in it.
Anyway, they found a new one, that seems to be one of their better ones in terms of vacuousness:
Kerry, according to the exit polls, may have benefited by what some voters described as his electability -- meaning the ability to beat President Bush in the fall. (link)
So let's get this straight: this new buzzword, which I've seen springing up in the news like some new memetic plague which I even now help to disseminate, "electability," is defined as the candidate's ability to get elected. So people are taking a liking to the guy because the guy projects an air which implies that people will take a liking to the guy.
Circular reasoning's cool because it's circular.
I'm going to go get some aspirin now.
Posted by zibblsnrt at January 27, 2004 07:17 PM
I think its more a matter of they're voting for him because he seems to be most likely to win the votes of people who aren't already confirmed Democrats. In other words, he seems to be the candidate most likely to beat Bush.
Posted by: Doug at January 30, 2004 08:36 AMAnd he'd be the candidate most likely to beat Bush because the majority of voters are most likely going to vote for him, which goes back to the voters favouring him because they think they'll favour him. It's still a circular, or at least self-fulfilling, claim, which kinda affirms my point.
Posted by: Zibblsnrt at January 30, 2004 05:29 PMIts gotta start somewhere though. At some point he pulled ahead of Dean as the poster child for the "Anybody but Bush" vote. He didn't start there.
Posted by: Doug at February 2, 2004 05:48 AM