"Obama and the Rules"

From "Obama and the Rules," in the America Prospect:

Democratic presidential primary contests often follow a familiar pattern: There is one candidate (usually the one I find myself supporting) with a high-minded pitch for "a new kind of politics" -- what the Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein recently called the "wine track" candidate -- and there is a "beer track" candidate who says things like "It’s your fight, too!" (Dick Gephardt, 1988) or "The presidency [isn’t] an academic exercise; [it] has to be a day-to-day fight for the American people" (Al Gore, 2000).

Usually, as Brownstein points out, the wine-tracker has a nice run in the odd-numbered year, because better-educated voters pay attention earlier. Then, when the real contest begins, the beer-track candidate picks up the union endorsements and the working-class voters, the results quickly resolve in his favor, and the rest of us take home our "Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Bruce Babbitt" bumper stickers.