The political press is commonly criticized for simply focusing on the horse race aspect of presidential campaigns and ignoring policy proposals and other aspects of it, but here is a defense of that approach. This type of jouranism may be necessary in the early stages of a campaign - the invisible primary (or the money primary) - when many decisions regarding which candidates should run and who will work and provide monetary support for them are done out of sight.
. . . primary elections are different. A primary campaign, and especially its early “invisible” period, can be understood as a time when party leaders—in other words, “insiders”—talk to, and argue with, each other about who their standard-bearer should be. Many factors go into that choice, from perceptions about electability to petty personal considerations. But the argument is, in large part, a contest over who wields power within the party, and what sort of values and goals the party wants to prioritize.
