Ethnography: The New Hampshire Primary - 2020

Ethnography: 

The New Hampshire Primary - 2020

          The New Hampshire Presidential Primary was held on Tuesday, Feb. 11^th 2020 and I traveled to Manchester, NH, on February 9^th and 10^th. I previously observed New Hampshire Primaries in Manchester in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Manchester is the largest city in the state and is where the national media and most of the campaigns are headquartered. Manchester, in the days leading up to the primary, provides an inexact and informal glimpse into presidential candidates and national political trends.

           I visited the Manchester campaign offices of Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttagieg, Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren and I hung out at the Doubletree Hotel which serves as an informal headquarters for the national and Boston media. I drove Uber passengers on both days and in that capacity I spoke with local Manchester citizens, most of whom seemed oblivious to the political goings on in their city, and media figures who offered me a great deal of inside information. I drove the nephew of candidate Tom Stryer, who was serving as his campaign coordinator. My conversation with him revealed strategies and memes that Democrats will likely employ against President Trump in the general election.

          The Bernie Sanders office staff was serious and determined, quiet and focused. The atmosphere in his office was one of confidence and calm. One of the volunteers described to me in detail their ground game strategy and how they were canvassing door to door. Sanders positions are clear and are well known. Sanders people were hard at work and I sensed that they were going to win, although, the office generally lacked the energy and enthusiasm of 2016, the year Sanders achieved a major New Hampshire victory even though all the delegates went to Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the Sanders campaign, having been previously ripped off by the Democratic Party, was a bit cynical, perhaps a bit wary and jaded.

          The Elizabeth Warren office was spare and looked threadbare and the few volunteers who were there and who were tugging in seemed demoralized and depressed. The general attitude among Democrats I spoke with in other campaign offices and on the street was that Warren is despised and, to toss in a bot of editorial commentary, for good reason. In all my years of coming to New Hampshire primaries, My opinion: I have never witnessed a more disreputable presidential candidate and a phonier person running for President than Elizabeth Warren.

         The Pete Buttagieg staff seemed motivated but confused in terms of how to answer questions about his positions. I didn’t get much of a sense of who Buttagieg is or why I should support him. On the wall of the Buttigieg office was photos of Buttagieg, his boyfriend or husband, and, presumably, two of their dogs. I got the same sense from Buttagieg that I got from Barack Obama when I visited Manchester during the primary in 2008. He looks good, he sounds intelligent, he came out of nowhere and he says little of substance but he does so with elegance and a phony intellectual accent. Like Obama, Buttegieg has a nice smile. This worked for Obama but I’m not sure this same trick will work for Buttagieg, at least I hope not. Like Obama, Buttegieg poses as a moderate and garners conservative cross-over support. Buttagieg, however, lacks Obama’s chrisma and cult following, at least outside the gay community, and I don’t sense that even they are all that enthusiastic about him.

          Andrew Yang had strong and even passionate support both from his office staff and from people walking in off the street. Yang appears to be not as vague or as slippery as Buttagieg and, I suspect, a lot of his supporters will end up supporting President Trump after he drops out. For the same reason that Buttagieg had high numbers of gay people in his office, Yang had a good number of Asians in his. Democratic candidates, and their electorate, often promote and exploit identity politics which is a problem for Biden and an even bigger problem for the faux Native American Warren. Joe Biden and is followers were virtually invisible and he was never mentioned. I saw one bumper sticker and that is all. I witnessed Amy Klobacher get on her bus of green festooned with as giant AMY.

          The real rock star of the New Hampshire primary this year, by any objective estimation, and the candidate who captured the lions share of the energy, was undoubtedly President Trump who held a rally at the SNHU Center on the Monday before the Tuesday vote. While I didn’t attend the rally itself, I observed the goings on outside and at the Doubletree Hotel which was the media center nearby. Trump supporters were out in force, both at the rally and on the street both days that I was there with their handmade signs and their carts of merchandise. They possessed an air of subversive excitement. To quote the King in the Pogo Comic: The peasants are revolting! 

          In the lead-up to the Trump rally, streets were closed and people were streaming in like they were going to Woodstock. The atmosphere was festive and stood in stark contrast to the scowling media figures prowling around at the virtually empty Doubletree. A few straggling anti-Trumpers stood on the periphery of the rally holding vulgar and obscene signs while the liberal media doyens inside the empty hotel muttered obscenities as they sipped their Chablis and drowned their sorrows by gorging themselves in Fois Gras and other indescribable food popular with liberal types.  

          My general impression of the Trump supporters was that they can be a bit rough around the edges, unfashionable according to liberal standards, but they are genuinely sincere and well-meaning working people. My impression is that the mainstream liberal media falsely portrays the Trump supporters, and President Trump himself as somehow hateful. I saw no evidence of this.