From a AP article on a Cahill-Mehlman forum at the Kennedy School:
Both sides also agreed that the Internet and other emerging news technologies have transformed the political process by making it more democratic and encouraging more people to become involved.
I certainly hope so, but you couldn't tell that from how they ran their campaigns. I got nothing but a constant torrent of lame fundraising asks from Cahill and/or her candidate via e-mail, and while I never successfully subscribed to the Bush list, my understanding is that they excelled in distributing tawdry attack ads they didn't or couldn't broadcast. Yawn.
Political pros, particularly at such a high level, are concerned with precisely two things -- raising money and winning votes. Which is fine -- it's what they're paid to do, and they do it well (well, at least Mehlman does). What drives me nuts, however, is when they try to fashion themselves as elder sages focused the health of the republic by repeating vague conventional wisdom.
The internet has significant potential to turn highly-motivated partisans into donors and door-knockers, and both campaigns did that with some success. But there's nothing particularly revolutionary or democratic about that. Neither of them showed any real interest in using the internet to invite meaningful participation in the campaign process, which is revolutionary (and seems to pay off in fund-raising in a big way, if the Dean campaign is any indicator).
Maybe I'm sleep deprived and reading too much into a single paragraph in a wire story. It looks like archived video from the forum in question will be available online (last week's forum with Joe Trippi already is), so I'll reserve final judgement until then.
Marc Cooper has some good thoughts (and links) on the phenomenon of progressive activists refusing to face up to the reality of the electoral defeat. His LA Weekly column is particularly insightful, if a tad strident:
I demand no mea culpas from the Democrats. In fact, I don’t really care what the Democrats do. The hardened inner shell of the party can and will go on as it pleases, raising gazillions and favoring sure-fire loser candidates like Hillary Clinton.I do care, however, about all those liberals and radicals and young voters who invested so much of their hope in MoveOn and similar groups as the backbone of some new progressive movement. Please proceed with great caution and even more skepticism.
The attendees at the MoveOn parties were asked to vote on what they think are the most important issues to be pursued over the next four years. The results, by my reckoning, are mind-blowing. Election reform and media reform came in first and second.
This is classic denial, a clumsy outsourcing of political responsibility. The inherent message: We or, if you prefer, Kerry lost because the voting was fishy and the media were skewed. Not our fault that we couldn’t rouse a majority. The only big problem Democrats have are external, not internal.
Given my earlier comments about some peculiar features of the exit poll results among demographic subgroups, it's worth noting that Ruy Teixeira has done some analysis comparing the NEP exit poll to actual county results, and he concludes that the exit polls were likely flat-out wrong about the spatial distribution of Bush's gains, as well as his performance among Latino voters.
Since my post yesterday regarding exit poll breakdowns by size of place, I've spent more time looking at the subgroups relative to 2000, and I think I can now say with some confidence that the dominant spin about values is basically wrong, though I'm still coming up short on alternative explanations. Let's start with the former:
First, in today's New York Times, ABC news pollster Gary Langer takes on the original exit poll question, noting that it
asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result.
Next, Alan Abramowitz analyzes the data on church attendance and finds that there's no appreciable difference in the percentage of voters claiming to attend church regularly, or in the percentage by which they voted for Bush. On the contrary, "between 2000 and 2004, President Bush's largest gains occurred among less religious voters, not among more religious voters."
The latter point, as well as my original one, is also made by Philip Klinkner (via Mathew Gross, who also linked to me!), but even more interesting is the data he points to on income. Turns out that Bush gained serious ground among higher-income voters (which expanded as a portion of the electorate), while Kerry made (very minor) gains among working-class ones ($15k-$50k per year).
Wow! Combine that with the data on losing voters in urban areas, and a picture starts to emerge: more affluent and cosmpolitan voters swung to Bush, right?
Well, let's go back to the exit poll data, this time by education. It turns out that voters with college or post-graduate degrees didn't shift from 2000, but voters with high-school diplomas or some-college education shifted slightly (+3%) towards Bush (I suspect that the numbers on voters without high-school education, who are only 4% of the electorate aren't statistically reliable).
So perhaps the determining swing group in this election was affluent, urban, less-educated voters who don't regularly go to church. Or perhaps we're dealing with complex election results which we shouldn't be hastily drawing simple conclusions about.
For now, I'm going with the latter. In the meantime, I'm re-reading Klinkner's fantastic paper on "Court vs. Country" and why the Democrats lost Congress in the first place.
John Kerry lost on Tuesday. The other guy (maybe we should stop using his name?) got more votes. 3.5 million more, to be exact. 130,000 more in Ohio. 377,000 more in Florida. In the most closely-monitored election in American history. With no credible evidence of irregularities significant enough to even begin to match those margins.
So can we please stop claiming it was stolen?
Too many lefties have been over-focused on problems with voting machines for months now (which is not to say that paper audit trails aren't a damned good idea). Before the election, I wondered if a lot of it wasn't a perverse kind of wishful thinking: hoping to have the moral satisfaction of shouting "fraud!"
I know it's easier to chalk misfortune up to shadowy conspiracy than to face up to facts that are emotionally devastating. But if we ever want to take our country back, we've got to do exactly that -- and then pick ourselves up and figure out where to go from here.
Unless you've been in a cave since Tuesday, you've heard that this election was lost in the heartland -- that John Kerry simply couldn't connect with or speak to their religious values.
If that's the case, can someone please explain these exit poll results?
For those too lazy to follow the link, CNN's exit poll has Bush gaining 13 points among voters from big cities since 2000, while actually losing 9 points among those from small towns, and staying even among those from rural areas.
In a word: huh?
I was going to write an entry, but Paul Waldman has already said what I was about to. It's short, so go read it -- and then do it.
UPDATE: This piece by Katrina vanden Heuvel is in a similar vein and also pretty good.
If this election is as close as is widely expected (I think it won't be, see below), with folks on both side as pumped as they are, the fight over this election will not just be a legal or media one, as Mathew Gross points out. He thinks it's a bad thing, which it certainly could be. But if this election is stolen as 2000 was, we should all be at the barricades.
I've been meaning to post something more substantial on this, but I've had too many thoughts and too little time. But I want to go on the record pointing out that 2004 is 36 years after 1968, perhaps the last realignment to occur in American politics (a "split-level" one which didn't really hit down-ballot until 1994). The textbook theory of realignments in American politics is that they occur every 36 years (1932, 1896, 1932).
I'm not sure what's going to happen tomorrow, but I don't think it's gonna look much any of those (though Karl Rove is hoping for a repeat of 1896). I do think we could be seeing changes, or the culmination of changes, in voting patterns that will "stick" for many years to come.
In my book, the fundamental feature of these past realignments (or semi-realignments, or alleged realignments) has been that the critical elections in question constructed (or re-constructed) the political self-identity of large groups of voters for many elections into the future. Voters weren't just acting out of well-worn reflex or lackadasical whim, but making a commitment so serious and considered that they would stick to it for most of the rest of their lives.
I think that might just be the kind of commitment being made tomorrow. Nearly everyone casting a vote tomorrow will not be expressing a hesitant preference, but a full-throated statement, a judgement on the politics and policies of the Bush administration, which could have ripples for years to come.
Kerry wins both the popular vote, 51-48, and the electoral college, 311-227 (NH, FL, and OH go to Kerry, others same as 2000).
As for the (competitive) Washington statewides, Chris Gregoire (53-47), Rob McKenna, Sam Reed, Doug Sutherland, Judy Billings. For Congress, Dave Reichert, Don Barbieri (both very close). Initiatives 297, 872, and 884 pass; 892, R-55 fail, as does the Monorail recall. Dems make gains in both houses of the state legislature -- Brian Weinstein, Laurie Dolan, Larry Springer, Pat Sullivan, and Derek Kilmer win, among others.
And a few Senate picks from around the country: Castor, Salazar, Knowles, Coburn, DeMint, Thune, Bunning. Republicans maintain control of both houses of Congress, but with a narrower margin in the House.
I have a terrible track record with these things, though, so watch as I'm proven wildly wrong. The only calls I really have a well-thought rationale for are the presidential race and the WA state legislature - the former based on my wishful interpretation of polling data (relative to past performance), the latter based mostly on direct observation.
Mathew Gross has thrown down the collective gauntlet, so I might as well join in:
Kerry - 50%, 305 electoral votes
Bush - 47%, 233 electoral votes
Nader - 1.5%
Others - 1.5
The electoral college guess seems very optimistic, but my basic premise is that Kerry wins both Ohio and Florida, each of which is very possible given the current polls and the tremendous ground game going on there (Pennsylvania is looking increasingly safe). The only other state to change hands in his favor from 2000 would be New Hampshire, while he would actually lose Wisconsin, and Colorado would split 5-4 in favor of Bush. (I'm also conservatively keeping Nevada and Missouri in the GOP column, each of which is far from a sure thing.)
Ask me again after the third debate, though.
By the way, the best tool I've seen for playing around with the electoral map is on the front page of myDD (click on the white space for a larger pop-up).
Also, check out the track-backs on Gross's entry above for predictions from a lot of people, many of them much smarter than me.
"That's my job. ... It's hard ... It's hard work ... Frankly, I don't even know why my opponent wants this job ... 'cause it's hard ..."
"My position on the war has always been clear. I have consistently opposed the war in front of anti-war groups, and favored it in front of pro-war ones. That's not flip-flopping, it's pandering, and Americans deserve a president who knows the difference."
The rest of Saturday Night Live may suck, but damn they know how to skewer a presidential debate.
(Also, it turns out Ben Affleck does a pretty good James Carville.)
Kerry won tonight's debate, at least in the conventional sense: all the pundits and instant polls agreed. He was in good form -- articulate, forceful, and "presidential." While there's definitely lots of room for improvement (in particular, he really needs to start looking at the camera), he clearly bested Bush (who looked frustrated and flustered far too frequently). That's very important, because so much of a presidential campaign is about mojo, for lack of a better term -- who's got the initiative. If Kerry can ride this wave through the weekend until the Edwards-Cheney debate on Tuesday, he may make significant gains.
But don't count on this turning the tide in the race. Even if a majority of viewers thought Kerry won the debate from a rhetorical point of view, I wouldn't expect to see serious movement on the horse-race numbers, at least not immediately, for a few reasons:
Almost a quarter-century ago, Ronald Reagan stood up on a stage like this one and asked a famous series of questions. I'd like to ask them again tonight:
"Are you better off now than you were you four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe?"
Unfortunately, I think most Americans tonight are answering no to all of those questions. All of us now live with the constant fear of a terrorist attack on a scale that would have been unthinkable a few short years ago.
And yet this administration has failed to deal with that threat. From the beginning, it has been less concerned with terrorism, and more concerned with its own narrow agenda of past grudges and risky schemes. As a result, we have alienated many of our closest friends and allies around the world. America used to be both feared and admired -- today we are merely feared.
But most tragically, we have lost many of our finest and bravest young men and women in a poorly-planned, unnecessary war to eliminate a threat which did not exist.
My opponent does not want to talk about the consequences of his foreign policy, or about how he misled you in the run-up to war. He'd rather send his sleazy friends off to lie about my service in Vietnam more than thirty years ago.
Tonight, I'd like to ask for your vote. Not because of what I did then, but because of what I'll do now. With your help, I'll work to rebuild our place in the world community, so that we can enlist others' help in rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq, so that our troops can home within the next four years.
And most importantly, we'll re-focus on the very real threat posed by anti-American terrorism. Not only will we hunt down the terrorists wherever they try to hide, but we'll work over the long-term to attack the root causes of terrorism, starting with a New Apollo plan for energy independence, which you can read all about on my website, johnkerry.com.
Thank you for listening, and for participating in the democratic process that is our birthright as Americans.
Goodnight, and god bless.
Anyone who says, 'I don't care if Bush gets elected' is basically telling poor and working people in the country, 'I don't care if your lives are destroyed. I don't care whether you are going to have a little money to help your disabled mother. I just don't care, because from my elevated point of view I don't see much difference between them.' That's a way of saying, 'Pay no attention to me, because I don't care about you.' Apart from its being wrong, it's a recipe for disaster if you're hoping to ever develop a popular movement and a political alternative.
And Seymor Hersh on the Bush administration:
Wouldn't it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn't believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that's moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe.
Complaints from the public and the press about dirty politics almost always focus on TV ads, but the really slimy stuff is usually direct mail, which usually manages to pass totally under the radar.
Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."
Obviously false, incendiary, and hate-mongering, coming not from one of them "shadowy" 527s, but from the RNC for chrissakes. And yet inexplicably considered a minor story.
If Senator John Kerry really has advisers telling him not to attack Mr. Bush on national security, he should dump them. When Dick Cheney is saying vote Bush or die, responding with speeches about jobs and health care doesn't cut it.Mr. Kerry should counterattack by saying that Mr. Bush is endangering the nation by subordinating national security to politics.
In fact, Kerry will probably make some gains with the renewed focus on jobs and health care. But those will be totally transitory, because the next time Bush gets an opportunity to mouth "9/11" on national television, they'll vanish.
Kerry needs a constant, one-note, attack on Bush's national security credibility, and he needs one now.
Just in case anyone out there was even thinking of toying with the idea of possibly voting for Nader, this should change their mind. As well as make me wish I'd put more effort into Herb Bernstein's class.
Rudy Giuliani just referred to September 11 as the "greatest crisis in our history." Perhaps just a little historical perspective is in order?
UPDATE: Now he's going after Kerry's flip-flopping with great passion and at great length -- far harsher than anything said in Boston.
Words of wisdom from Matthew Gross:
With just over nine weeks to go before Election Day, did we or did we not just waste two precious weeks talking about Vietnam, instead of Iraq? Cambodia, instead of jobs?And a clear answer presents itself: Yes, we did. And the fact that we did is pretty damn good evidence regarding which campaign is in control of this debate.
If the election were held today, I have no doubt that John Kerry would win. But the election isn't being held today. What is said and what is debated in the next nine weeks will determine who wins on November 2nd. And for all of Bush's weaknesses-- the economy, the looming milestone of 1000 dead in Iraq, the rising millions of the uninsured-- he (or his minions) are still managing to shift the debate away from his weaknesses and onto John Kerry's.
Very worrisome indeed.
So some people seem to be very worried about the potential impact of, shall we say, colorful protests at the RNC, most notably Eric Alterman. I was just about to post something on the subject when I noticed it had already been said. The media will pay no attention to the protests, so it doesn't matter if a few windows are broken. A far bigger concern is the NYPD using it as an excuse to beat up on innocent people peacefully expressing dissent.
Over at myDD, I learned about Dear Ralph, a very misguided attempt to get Nader to drop out of the raise by dangling money in front of Nader-founded organizations.
So I wrote them an e-mail:
I write as a recovering Nader supporter (from 2000) who is totally opposed to his 2004 candidacy. I very much appreciate your message about the importance of Nader's legacy, but am very concerned that your chosen tactic is unfair to the organizations he has founded, many of whom have no ongoing relationship with him. Public Citizen in particular has suffered in the past few years (donations dropping significantly) thanks to people angry with Nader, despite the fact that he's had nothing to do with the organization since 1980. Your site can only contribute to such misunderstanding. At the very least, I suggest that you add a prominent disclaimer reminding people not to punish these important organizations for the crimes of their founder.
I just got a response:
Thank you so much for your e-mail. I share your concerns about how Nader's candidacy is affecting the wonderful organizations he's helped to found: the whole point of the site is to draw attention to how Nader's candidacy is undermining his legacy, not only in terms of the effect on donations (as you observed) but also in what it would mean for all of Nader's achievements if Bush is reelected.
Way to miss the point. dearralph@dearralph.com if you want to share your thoughts as well.
Good news, in three parts:
I. The very smart Ruy Teixeira reports that whether there was an overall bounce or not, the internals look good for Kerry:
His favorables go up from 48 percent/39 percent pre-convention to 51 percent/32 percent post-convention. His advantage on the economy goes from –1 to +11; on Iraq, from –12 to +2; on education, from +1 to +13; on the campaign against terrorism, from –18 to –3; on health care, from +3 to +19; and on taxes, from –6 to +6.On candidate characteristics, he also posts strong gains: on honest and trustworthy, he goes from –6 to +6; on understands the problems of people like you, from +4 to +14; on strong leader, from –19 to –6; on making the country safer and more secure, from –16 to –3; on shares your values, from –6 to +6; and on having a vision for the future, he bests Bush by thirteen points.
Kerry also is now considered more of an optimist; pre-convention, he was considered an optimist by 55 percent and a pessimist by 34 percent; now he is rated an optimist by 65 percent and a pessimist by 22 percent. That’s actually a better rating than Bush now gets on this question.
And here’s a particularly impressive result: by 52 percent to 44 percent, voters select Kerry over Bush as the one better qualified to be commander in chief of the U.S. military.
II. New polling shows Pennsylvania moving gloriously close to the safe Democratic column: 53-41, an even better margin for Kerry than in my home state of Washington, where nobody seriously thinks Bush has much of a shot. And Tennessee's looking close too.
III. Fuck Matthew Dowd. Frank Luntz thinks Bush is in big trouble. (And lest you think that's nothing more than bar-room gossip, his focus group presentation the night of Kerry's speech didn't make the prospects look too sunny for his party.)
E.J. Dionne is becoming one of my favorite commentators. He hits the nail on the head in discussing what was so innovative and effective about the convention last week.
Some choice grafs:
But at this year's convention, the Democrats -- including, interestingly, Clinton himself -- scrapped the defensive approach and went on offense.Thus emerged a major theme of this fall's campaign: that Republicans are a party of dividers who can win only by setting one group of Americans against another.
...
Attacking divisiveness could yield multiple dividends in the fall. Having laid down their argument, Democrats can respond to Republican attacks with a breezy, Reaganesque "there they go again."
...
It's commonly said that this convention was designed to "move the Democrats to the center." Actually, it was a convention designed to move the center toward the Democrats.
Too many political analysts confuse left and right, which are fundamentally about ideology and policy, with rhetoric. Speaking in ways that will appeal to those who don't already share your views isn't moving to the center -- it's simply effective political communication. And there's a double standard at play: Bush regularly makes very conservative policy -- particularly on social issues -- but rarely promotes it through right-wing tirades, and no talking head ever remarks that he's moving to the center or selling out his base.
And though Dionne doesn't say it, this sort of political message actually creates an opportunity for the Democrats to move to the left on policy, by opening a space for bold new proposals offered in terms of national purpose and unity, which we got a taste of in Kerry's call for energy independence:
We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we only have three percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for fifty-three percent of what we consume?
I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation – not the Saudi royal family.
And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future -- so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Hopefully there's more where that came from.
Addendum:
I should point out, in typically spiteful form, that Howard Dean should get much of the credit for this rhetorical shift. To wit:
I am tired of being divided in this country. I am tired of being divided by race. I am tired of being divided by gender, when the president thinks he knows better than an American woman what kind of reproductive health care that she ought to have.I'm tired of being divided by income. I'm tired of being divided by sexual orientation. I'm tired of being divided by religion.
When we say we want our country back, what we mean is that we want the country that all of us were promised when we were 21 years old, the country where we were all in this together, where we could believe, where we could hope again that America would be a better place as we grew older.
Amen.
Addendum II:
Over at The Gadflyer, Paul Waldman is making the same point (about unity, that is, not Dean).
So I've had a lot of thoughts for blog posts about this convention, but obviously none of them have quite made it. Mostly just laziness, but I thought it would be worthwhile to put a few thoughts down about the big speech before he goes live.
First, this is hugely important, no matter what any pundits say about the meaningless pageantry of political conventions, or how undecided voters there are. This is Kerry's first, best, and last opportunity to introduce himself to the nation.
Obviously, then, the first major objective for Kerry is to pass the "gut check" with voters -- they need to become comfortable with the idea that he could be their president, regardless of what they think of the current one. The talking heads have been saying this for days, and of course they're right.
As they are, particularly the conservative ones, who say that Kerry needs to say something meaningful about Iraq. He has gone through the entire campaign to this point trying to talk around the issue without ever really offering a coherent policy. It's not so much that he needs to explain his vote (although he still hasn't, adequately), it's that he needs to offer some specifics, and some common sense, on how we can get our troops out of what he now acknowledges is a mess. It's a tough task, but if he can do it, I think he could win the election tonight.
And finally, and this is a point that most of the pundits have underemphasized (incorrectly, I think), is that no matter how bad Bush's poll numbers, no matter how polarized the nation is, he still does need to make a cogent, compelling, and concise (the latter will be the biggest problem for him), for why Bush needs to be fired. Clinton and Carter both did that well on Monday, and Edwards touched on it yesterday, but it needs to be heard from the horse's mouth.
From my previous posts, my low opinion of John Kerry is probably pretty clear. I don't particularly like the man, and I think he's far from the most capable candidate the party has to offer. But I'm optimistic about tonight. In part because Bob Shrum is doing the writing, but in part because if there's one good thing that can be said about Kerry, it's that he comes out fighting when the stakes are high -- in Iowa in January, against Bill Weld in '96, and yes, even as a young man in Vietnam.
And godspeed to him.
Figured I should probably blog something about the Take Back America Conference while it's still vaguely topical.
Bottom line is that it was incredible. I have rarely seen a more passionate and excited gathering -- thousands and thousands of progressives from all over the country. Little more than a year ago, I thought moving the Democratic Party to the left was an impossible pipe dream. What a difference a year makes.
Some recurring themes
I caught a fascinating panel disccussion on C-SPAN the other day about the future of the Iraq. It was put on by the Center for American Progress, but the really provocative comments came from Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute(!), who argued strongly that the U.S. would be wise to get out of Iraq now -- that the timetable should be months, not years.
I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to any proposal on the issue. On the one hand, I remain vigorously opposed to the administration having gone to war, and to its continuing insistence that Americans should be deciding on how and when the country transitions to democracy. And I want us to stop spending billions of dollars and sacrificing the lives of hundreds of young men and women for such purposes.
But at the same time, I don't think it's a moral -- or even strategically wise -- course of action to aid a dictator's rise to power then destroy a country with two wars and a decade of economic sanctions, only to turn around, say "oops" and let it fall into the hands of whoever winds up with the most guns. And let's not kid ourselves: that would be the consequence of an immediate pull-out from Iraq. There is no international community waiting in the wings to come in and pick up the pieces. Iraqis deserve the chance to live under a democratic government, on their own terms, not George Bush's or Muqtada al-Sadr's.
Meanwhile, Ruy Teixiera (an increasingly good person to be reading as the campaign season heats up), chimes in with some polling-driven criticism of the Kerry message on Iraq:
Personally, I think Democratic voters are likely to stick with Kerry no matter what his Iraq position--because they want to get rid of Bush so badly. What I worry about is his ability to appeal to independent voters, without some kind of exit strategy.
Very interesting.
I meant to post this when I finished it two weeks ago. It's a paper I wrote for a class, "Civil Society and the State: Rethinking Theory," about the Dean campaign as a case study in social capital formation. Nothing totally brilliant or original (and it could've used some more revisions), but I vainly thought others might find it interesting. Feedback is more than welcome.
When Howard Dean, then Governor of Vermont, first filed the paperwork for a presidential run in May 2002, the Boston Globe did not find the 500-word story worthy of its front page (Milligan). All available evidence indicates that the candidate himself had no expectation of ever occupying the Oval Office. And yet by the time his campaign began to collapse this January, it had become a media sensation that left pundits and political operatives alike playing catch-up as they sought to understand how a virtually-unknown governor from a small New England state had become the front-runner for his party's nomination despite beginning with virtually no support among its establishment.
On a personal level, I can distinctly recall laughing when first being told of Dean's impending candidacy by a friend from Vermont. I had just completed a course on American elections, during which it was made very clear that the increasingly front-loaded nature of the primary calendar meant that presidential nominees are chosen by insiders capable of raising large sums of money and securing key endorsements. Dean definitely did not fit that bill, and yet a year later I found myself interning for a campaign which had shattered virtually every Democratic Party fund-raising record and won the support of many of its key players, including the last nominee and the country's two most politically powerful labor unions.
Some of the explanation for the shift lies in the "right place, right time" character of Dean's strident anti-Bush rhetoric, but there was another, more paradigmatic innovation which is missed by analyzing the words and actions of the candidate. Dean became a phenomenon not just by connecting with grassroots supporters -- which every smart campaign seeks to do -- but by connecting them with one another. In so doing, they may not only have revolutionized the practice of political campaigning, but provided a fascinating case study for recent academic fascination with civic engagement.
The political press paid a great deal of attention to Dean's consistently harsh attacks on the Bush administration, and sometimes even on the Democratic Party, but relatively little discussion was given to what became a sort of credo for the campaign, with which he closed every speech:
The great lie spoken by politicians on platforms like this is the cry of "elect me and I will solve all your problems." The truth is the future of our nation rests in your hands, and not in mine. Abraham Lincoln said that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth. But this President has forgotten ordinary people. ... You have the power to give Americans a reason to vote again. ... You have the power to take back the Democratic Party. You have the power to take our country back. And we have the power to take the White House back in 2004. (Dean, "Great American Restoration")
Cynics might dismiss such language as rhetorical flourish, but it was taken seriously and literally by supporters. By the time I saw Dean deliver those lines on election night in New Hampshire, much of the audience was reciting it along with him. And I doubt I was the only supporter moved to tears when I saw him deliver them on television for the last time as he exited the race. Such language set the tone and tenor of the campaign, by sending a strong message that it was not the property of staffers in Vermont, but of every supporter in every community around the nation.
But Dean's stump speeches, at their best, went beyond firing up his supporters, to communicating a certain vision of American society. While it is typical for political candidates -- particularly at the presidential level -- to use patriotic or downright nationalist imagery, Dean's language was qualitatively different. Quoting again from his announcement speech, appropriately titled "The Great American Restoration":
This campaign is about more than issue differences ... It is about something as important as our children. It's about who we are as Americans. Here are the words of John Winthrop: "We shall be as one. We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always living before our eyes our Commission and Community in our work." It is that ideal, the ideal of the American community, that we seek to restore.... An America where it is not enough for me to want good public schools and a better life for my children - but an obligation, and a responsibility as citizens to insure that every child in America may go to a good public school and have the opportunity of a better life. An America where it is not enough to protect my rights under the law but where it is a duty and an obligation for each of us as Americans to make sure every American is equal under the law. An America where it is not enough to proclaim the words freedom, self-government, and democracy, but where it is a duty and a responsibility to participate together in common purpose with the sacrifice required of each of us to give those words meaning.
Dean probably did not realize -- although his speechwriter might have -- that he was echoing the writing of political scientist Robert Putnam in Making Democracy Work, where he uses Winthrop's quotation to almost precisely the same effect in articulating a vision of "civic community" which sounds surprisingly similar to Dean's. According to Putnam, a civic community is distinguished by three elements: civic engagement ("participate together in common purpose"); political equality ("make sure every American is equal under the law") ; and solidarity, trust, and tolerance ("the ideal of American community"). Importantly, writes Putnam, "The norms and values of the civic community are embodied in, and reinforced by, distinctive social structures and practices" (325). Specifically, "civil associations contribute to the effectiveness and stability of democratic government ... a dense network of secondary associations both embodies and contributes to effective social collaboration" (326). This is what Putnam and other social scientists call "social capital," formally defined as "social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them" (Bowling Alone), and it is what the Dean campaign sought to build.
Putnam is best known, at least popularly, not for his theoretical work in the Italian context, but his applied study of social capital in the United States. First in a journal article, and then in a full-length book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, he makes the jarring but well-researched argument that America's stock of social capital has undergone rapid and serious decline since the 1960s.
Putnam spends a chapter of that work specifically analyzing the decline in political participation, and his conclusions are worth exploring. First, he points to the oft-cited statistic that voter turnout has declined seriously in the past few decades, from a peak of 62.8% in 1960 to a low of 48.9% in 1996 (31-32). Unlike many popular commentators, however, he points out that "this widely reported fact understates the real decline in Americans' commitment to electoral participation" (32), because it occurred during a period when hurdles to voter registration were falling, and African-Americans in the south were being realistically enfranchised for the first time (32-33). In other words, the decline in electoral participation is even worse than popularly thought.
Internet entrepreneur Scott Heiferman was living in New York on September 11, 2001, when, struck by the outpouring of togetherness in the aftermath of the attacks, he read Bowling Alone and was inspired to found Meetup.com. Meetup.com is an online service which organizes monthly local gatherings for users with common interests. Signing up is as simple as entering a zip code and voting for a preferred local venue. However, the site struggled to attract interest -- the most popular Meetup was for those interested in practicing witchcraft -- until late 2002, when, according to Heiferman, one of his employees noticed that their nascent politics category was attracting participation from a growing number of Dean supporters. (Castrone)
By his account, Heiferman got in touch with Joe Trippi, Dean's newly-hired campaign manager. Trippi was an old hand who had burned out on politics and turned to profitable high-tech consulting in the 90s. By Trippi's account, he found about Meetup.com on one of his favorite blogs, and was amazed by what he saw; the campaign inked a deal to integrate Meetup functionality into their own campaign website (Interview). The decision proved a fortuitous one -- to everyone's amazement, participation boomed, reaching 100,000 people in less than six months (Teachout, "Incredible Moment").
Much has been made of the importance of the Meetups in the Dean phenomenon, and very little of it is exaggeration. I wasn't sure what to expect when I went to my first Meetup in August, having heard about them for a few months prior. For starters, I was stunned to discover that the affluent and Republican-leaning suburban area in which I grew up had already outgrown a single Meetup venue and split into two. Nevertheless, the library meeting room was packed, and the designated Meetup host (who clearly had no experience facilitating meetings) seemed overwhelmed. He had an agenda sent by the "official" campaign, but had a very difficult getting past the testimonials item. In what I imagine must have resembled an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, person after person raised their hand to speak about why they had come to support Dean. The stories differed, from the man who had run a losing campaign for state representative, to the woman who'd given up on politics after volunteering for -- and then feeling betrayed by -- Bill Clinton in 1992, to others who hadn't been politically active since the 1960s, or never at all.
The pervasive and infectious spirit at every Meetup I attended was one of amazement and exhilaration. Undoubtedly, some of this was due to the amazing rise of our preferred candidate. But it seemed to me that the joy was equally associated with the discovery that there were other people -- lots of them -- who shared our concerns about the future of our country. The aftermath of September 11, the dismal performance by the Democrats in the 2002 elections, and the failure of the anti-war movement had contributed to a sense of powerlessness and isolation on the part of American progressives. Campaigning for Dean was not merely about electing a candidate, but about coming together to re-discover our sense of political efficacy and fight for a space in the political culture. As Zephyr Teachout, the campaign's director of Internet organizing, told the New York Times Magazine: "Meetup.com is emerging as the 'ritual' element of the new Dean community. 'It's like church, the central place where people go to get inspired'" (Shapiro).
That article by Samantha Shapiro, "The Dean Connection," was one of the first published attempts to understand what was driving the legions of Deaniacs -- as we came to be known, to my chagrin -- in relation to Putnam's theory:
The campaign sees political involvement in the way "Bowling Alone" does, as related to participation in civic organizations -- to people getting together socially. People at all levels of the Dean campaign will tell you that its purpose is not just to elect Howard Dean president. Just as significant, they say, the point is to give people something to believe in, and to connect those people to one another. The point is to get them out of their houses and bring them together at barbecues, rallies and voting booths.
Her article was not universally well-received by campaign supporters, however, in part because of her focus on two young campaign staffers who had joined the campaign after breaking up with their respective girlfriends. One Dean campaigner wrote:
I am a 44-year-old married man. I'm not looking for new friends. I support Dean because he's not afraid to take on this administration. He says the right things (most of the time). And I believe he has a real chance to win. It has nothing to do with making friends and telling my story. It's all about taking back control of this country from the right-wing extremists. Why can't you write about that? (Hormel)
Clearly, the campaign was experiencing a lot of both. But whatever the reason, people of all ages were flocking to participate in the campaign. And while there may have been a great deal of personal catharsis going on, there was also a lot of serious political momentum being built. At the Meetup I attended in August, volunteers had already begun organizing door-to-door canvassing efforts -- despite having no staffed campaign organization and being in a state with caucuses still more than six months away. The month before, the campaign had added a new twist to the Meetups by providing each Meetup host with the names and addresses of undecided Iowans and the stationery to write them hand-written letters. Many Meetups reported running out of letters, and polling showed a corresponding bump in support for Dean.
Such methods flew in the face of the contemporary style of political campaigning. Here, we can return to Putnam, who presents a paradox -- how is it that party organizations are growing in strength (as measured by size, fundraising, and organizational skill), even as fewer Americans are participating in partisan political activities (37-39)? The answer, he says, lies in the "professionalization and commercialization of politics in America. The 'contacts' that voters report are, in fact, less and less likely to be a visit from a neighborhood party worker and more and more likely to be an anonymous call from a paid phone bank" (39). "The bottom line in the political industry," he writes, "is this: Financial capital - the wherewithal for mass marketing - has replaced social capital - that is, grassroots citizen networks - as the coin of the realm" (39-40).
Putnam is exactly right. Though a variety of factors had begun to weaken the traditional party machines, the 1960s saw the emergence of a new style of consultant-centered campaigning, which shifted emphasis to the candidate and relied increasingly on mass media, both paid (campaign ads) and "earned" (news coverage). This professionalization of politics has brought with it professional training and professional literature, a field known as political management. One textbook on that subject has this to say about media strategy:
Coordination is crucial. The overall image of the candidate is created largely by the general strategy of campaign media. ... To build a coherent image, a campaign must commit itself to consistency, efficiency, proper timing, effective packaging, and a well-played expectations game. ... Consistency is demanding. A campaign's theme must be communicated up and down the chain of command. Typically, only designated staffers speak for the campaign - the candidate, the campaign manager, and the press secretary or communications director. (Shea 153-154)
In other words, a modern political campaign must run a very tight ship, with an effective top-down command strucuture. That does not begin to resemble what Dean and Trippi were doing. The campaign wasn't even obeying the basic structure for grassroots voter contact -- the "hub-and-spoke" model that was beaten into my head in an introductory campaign management course. Shapiro reports:
Joe Trippi ... says the campaign's structure is modeled on the Internet, which is organized as a grid, rather than as spokes surrounding a hub. ... Trippi likes to say that in the Internet model he has adopted for the campaign, the power lies with the people at "the edges of the network," rather than the center. When people from the unofficial campaign call and ask permission to undertake an activity on behalf of Dean, they are told they don't need permission.
Trippi, who began regularly telling journalists and Deaniacs alike that “the biggest myth in American politics is that Joe Trippi is running the Howard Dean campaign," loved nothing better than to talk about the revolutionary political potential of the Internet. Another one of his favorite metaphor-models came up in an interview:
T: ... I used to work for a little while for Progeny Linux Systems. I always wondered how could you take that same collaboration that occurs in Linux and open source and apply it here. What would happen if there were a way to do that and engage everybody in a in a presidential campaign? L: So is this an open-source presidential campaign? T: Yes. That moment when that was all going on made me think, "That's sort of what we're building here." I guess it's about as open as you can do it in modern-day politics.
"Open source" refers to a model for software development which has become increasingly popular in recent years. Instead of computer programmers within a single firm writing proprietary software and keeping the source code a secret (e.g., Microsoft), open-source software projects are developed openly and collaboratively by programmers from all over the world, and licensed under terms which allow anyone to examine and even modify the source code. By involving so many people in the development process, advocates argue, software becomes more stable, secure, and functional. And, according to some of its more radical and anarchist-inspired advocates -- who prefer the term free ("as in freedom") software -- such technology is fundamentally more democratic, egalitarian, and liberating, for both users and developers, than non-free (i.e., proprietary and closed-source) alternatives.
It is appropriate then, that the Dean campaign actually released software under an open source license. DeanSpace, a software package which enabled grassroots supporters to easily set up their own community websites, was just one of several online tools, eventually grouped together as the Dean Commons, which enabled supporters to contact and collaborate with one another, and reach out to undecided voters, all without the involvement of a single paid campaign staffer.
By far the most notable of these was the "Get Local" tool, which allowed literally anyone to organize and announce a campaign event on the website, ranging from fundraising houseparties to community service outings to flyering at farmers' markets. I remember searching Get Local for events in D.C. (where the campaign had no office and was organized entirely by volunteers) last Fall, and finding literally dozens of events for a single week. The night of a television debate, I had my choice of watching at a bar in Georgetown, a student lounge at George Washington University, or a houseparty in Arlington. Another popular feature was DeanLink, through which supporters could create profiles for themselves, with their interests and volunteer skills listed, and link their profile to others. Thus, finding someone to give a campaign presentation or translate a flyer into Spanish was as simple as searching your personal network -- or your zipcode -- for a volunteer who fit the bill.
By far the most noteworthy feature of the campaign's online presence, however, was its weblog, dubbed Blog for America. A weblog, typically shortened to blog, is a sort of sophisticated online journal, with entries shown in reverse chronological order. The content and quality of blogs varies widely, from whiny teenagers detailing the trials and tribulations of adolescent life to well-regarded political journalists offering continuous commentary and minor scoops.
The world of blogs, commonly known as the blogosphere, has several distinguishing features which separate them markedly from traditional journalism, even on the web. First, most have a commenting option, whereby any visitor can publicly respond to any posting. Second, most bloggers link to each other incestuously, promoting the latest interesting tidbit of news or analysis. Thus, blogs may be the first journalistic medium fundamentally built on horizontal networking. And while the there are a few immensely popular conservative blogs, the progressive blogosphere has positively exploded, causing many to remark that the left has finally found its own "echo chamber," an answer to the confluence of right-wing think-tanks, talk radio, and Fox News which relentlessly hammer at conservative messages until they eventually find their way into the mainstream press.
Joe Trippi was an avid blog-reader and intended for the campaign to have one, but they didn't get around to it until Matthew Gross, who had blogged for myDD.com (a favorite of Trippi's), showed up unannounced at campaign headquarters (Interview). The results may well go down in the history of campaign communications.
The most obvious benefit for the campaign was to plug into the potential of the blogosphere for recruiting supporters and raising money. Many established bloggers, frustrated with the mealy-mouthed rhetoric of most Democratic politicians, warmed up to Dean, and some began actively promoting him. Supporters started unofficial Dean blogs, some of which became quite popular in their own right.
Yet ultimately the most serious success of the blog was in developing a vertical relationship between supporters and the "official" campaign. The blog was not merely a sidelight project, another avenue for posting the latest press release or fundraising appeal. Rather, it was a full-time job for Gross and a major focus of several senior staffers, who not only constantly posted updates about the latest goings-on, but read and sometimes responded to the hundreds of comments each entry attracted. As a result, supporters felt empowered to offer all sorts of campaign advice on matters which any other campaign would've kept restricted to its senior strategists. For example, one supporter posted the following on the blog entry for the "Great American Restoration" speech:
A powerful message. Dr. Dean and his staff now must build on this energy by refining and polishing his personal demeanor and appearance. An ironed shirt, crisp tie, no stray facial expressions or gestures - simple things that are expected of a president. This is the true challenge - the unspoken and subtle qualities that can make or break a candidate.
While undoubtedly everyone at the campaign knew that Dean needed to wear an ironed shirt, the campaign did take such comments seriously. And when Dean and his advisers wanted to give up federal matching funds -- and the spending limits that go with them -- it first put the matter to an online vote of the supporters.
The end result was that the blog became the primary venue for supporters' increasingly strong self-identification with the campaign and with each other. Some of us merely checked it on a daily basis. A hard core posted comments constantly, developing a literal cast of characters for the comments sections. An unofficial "Meet the Blog Family" site was formed for regulars to post descriptions of themselves. The results did not fit Shapiro's twenty-something lonely hearts stereotype. Descriptions ran the gamut, but reasonably typical was "Bubie in Chicago":
I'm Bubie in Chicago - a 64 year old grandmother. I have not been politically active except to consistently vote (and vote Democratic, oh yes, and one year worked to get some local school board members elected) since I worked with my mother on Adlai Stevenson's campaign as a kid. I certainly have never contributed to a campaign before, and never even passed out leaflets, much less had a House Party for Dean, as I did in October.
Nothing was more emblematic of this sort of commitment than the bat, an online graphic periodically posted on the blog used for campaign staff to challenge supporters to meet a fundraising goal. Like a thermometer, the bat would fill up with red as the money came in. One of the first and most creative uses of the bat came in July 2003: in response to a planned $2,000-per-plate fundraising luncheon by Dick Cheney, campaign staff challenged supporters to match Cheney's $250,000. At the suggestion of a blog commenter, they posted a picture of Dean eating a $3 turkey sandwich; the grassroots responded, raising just over $500,000 in three days (Trippi, "You Did It").
But the truly amazing fundraising successes came at the end of each quarterly reporting period. Typically, presidential campaigns approach these by publicly trying to downplay expectations while privately scrambling for cash in the hopes of earning good coverage. As the end of each quarter approached, however, the Dean campaign put up a bat on the blog with an overly ambitious fundraising goal, knowing full well that a failure to meet it could be seen by journalists as a loss in momentum. That never happened, and the campaign shattered the Democratic record by raising nearly $15 million dollars in the third-quarter of 2003 ($5 million during the last five days), and then going on to exceed that figure in the fourth (Trippi, "What It's About"). Such contributions came overwhelmingly in small donations -- the average hovered around $75. Trippi coined the phrase the "$100 revolution," noting that if one million Americans donated were willing to donate $100 to the campaign, it would be on the same financial footing as Bush, who has collected tens of thousands of $2,000 contributions.
By the time the campaign came to a close in February 2004, the overall figures, some of which were proudly displayed in various hokey graphics on the sides of the blog, stood at:
Surprisingly, Robert Putnam has had little to say about the Dean campaign and the Meetup phenomenon he so directly inspired. He did sound encouraging when quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer in December: "When you bring people face-to-face and have real people talking to other real people about issues, it does change the character of the politics. It makes people actors again instead of just spectators" (Fifield). But the next month, his comments to the New York Times struck a different tone:
"If people are getting together to talk about politics, that's better than people sitting watching a 30-second sound bite," said Robert Putnam ... But Professor Putnam ... said more interaction among people with diverse views would be preferable. "The terribly polarized politics that we have now is the culmination of a trend that's been going on for 25 years," he said. "Whether the Internet is going to make the problem better or make it worse is a big, important question." (Harmon)
While the slant of the Times article was definitely to portray Internet politics as a preaching-to-the-choir phenomenon, Putnam is on the record as being extremely skeptical of online communication as a replacement for traditional forms of social capital, for several legitimate reasons -- the ongoing "digital divide," the difficulty of communicating nonverbal cues over computer networks, and the possibility of the Internet degrading passive and privatized forms of entertainment (Bowling Alone 174-180).
But I find much less to agree with in the criticism he makes in the Times article, echoing what he calls "cyberbalkanization" in Bowling Alone: "The Internet enables us to confine our communication to people who share precisely our interests... That powerful specialization is one of the medium's great attractions, but also one its subtler threats to bridging social capital" (177). To Putnam, this is devastating, because he places such value on "meaningfully engag[ing] with opposing views and hence learn[ing] from that engagement" (341). The major threat declining social capital poses to democracy is that "our politics will become more shrill and less balanced," because "When most people skip the meeting, those who are left tend to more extreme" (342).
This is an overly simplistic understanding of the relationships between civic participation, political culture, and public policymaking for which Putnam and his sympathizers have been criticized. Sheri Berman writes that "we need to marry an analysis of societal and cultural factors to the study of political institutions - something that recent neo-Tocquevillieans ... have ignored" (32). While Berman was concerned with situations in which civil society may produce deeply uncivil politics, I think the same can be said of the reverse. In other words, we cannot understand the Dean phenomenon -- and the supposedly polarizing character of its organizing structures -- without understanding the political institutions to which it was responding: namely, an executive and legislative branch dominated by an extreme right-wing increasingly interested in stifling unwelcome dissent.
At the outset, I quoted from Dean's announcement speech, noting that it drew from themes of declining civic community. What I did not include was the repeated references to the ways in which the Bush administration was causing or contributing to that very decline:
Today, our nation is in crisis. At home, this crisis manifests itself in this President's destruction of the idea of community. This President pushes forward an agenda and policies which divide us. He advocates economic polices which beggar the middle class and raise property taxes so that income taxes may be cut for those who ran Enron. He divides us by race by using the word quota, which appeals to the worst in us by instilling fear that people of color might take our jobs or our places in the nation's best universities. ... He divides us by gender by attacking a woman's right to make her own health care decisions. ... He divides us by sexual orientation by supporting senators who have slandered gay Americans...
Whatever his flaws (and believe me, there were many), this is what Dean, at his best, got right: connecting the immediate political issues of the day with a broader sense of the condition of the American body politic. In seeking to re-connect with one another, Deaniacs were, and perhaps are, not merely embracing some fuzzy notion of personal togetherness, but building the bonds of solidarity they know will be necessary for the long struggle ahead to build a powerful progressive political movement. It is too soon to tell they will persist beyond the collapse of their candidate, but political campaigning in America has already been transformed.
Berman, Sheri. "Civil Society and Political Institutionalization." Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective. Hanover: Tufts / UP of New England, 2001. 32-42.
Castrone, Linda. "Conversation Starter Meetup.com Is Not Just a Political Tool." The Denver Post. 11 Apr. 2004, final ed.: L05.
Dean, Howard. "The Great American Restoration." Blog for America. 23 Jun. 2003.
Fifield, Adam. "Dean Campaign Readies New Round of 'House Parties.'" Philadelphia Inquirer. 30 Dec. 2003.
Harmon, Amy. "Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again." New York Times. 25 Jan. 2004, late ed.: 16.
Hormel, Smokey. Letter. New York Times Magazine 21 Dec. 2003: 10.
Maslin, Paul. "The Front Runner's Fall." The Atlantic Monthly May 2004.
"Meet the Blog Family!: Howard Powered People." Accessed 6 May 2004.
Milligan, Susan. "Dean to Form Committee for 2004 Run: Vermont Governor First to Take Step." Boston Globe. 30 May 2002, third ed.: A3.
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
---, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993, 86-91. Rpt. in Hodgkinson, Virginia A. and Michael W. Foley, eds. The Civil Society Reader. Hanover: Tufts University, UP of New England, 2003, 322-327.
Shapiro, Samantha M. "The Dean Connection." New York Times Magazine 7 Dec. 2003: 56+.
Shea, Daniel M. and Michael John Burton. Campaign Craft: The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management. Rev. and expanded ed. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001.
Teachout, Zephyr. "Incredible Moment -- 100,000 on Meetup." Blog for America. 2 Sep. 2003.
Trippi, Joe. Interview with Lawrence Lessig. Lessig Blog. 19 Aug. 2003.
---. "What It's About." Blog for America. 1 Oct. 2003.
---. "You Did It!" Blog for America 29 Jul. 2003.
Micah Sifry has some interesting thoughts on the Reform Party's Nader endorsement (check out their press release for a sign of just how professional they are these days), which I think are mostly right on. Worth noting, however, is that Nader already appears to be winning in the Greens' delegate count (Peter Camejo is in the race to acquire delegates to vote for Nader).
Incidentally, for those concerned about the spoiler scenario, there's several key swing states (AZ, IN, MO, WV) where neither the Greens nor Reform has a ballot line and Nader will have to do some serious petitioning, which he's not shown much success at so far.
On the other side of things, Kos thinks the Libertarians could give Bush a run for his money in the form of wealthy Hollywood producer Aaron Russo. Worth following, although I was more under the impression that Gary Nolan was the frontrunner for the Libertarian nomination
Can anyone doubt that Dean would be taking this long to get a field organizations set up? Hell, he had spontaneously self-organized field organizations in every state before a single primary vote was cast.
And what's the best defense Kerry's people can come up with?
"You're not going to win every day, and you're not going to win every week."
My question: if you're not going to win the weeks when Bush is in free-fall on 9/11 and Iraq, precisely which weeks are you planning to win?
John Kerry has been the presumptive nominee for about a month and a half. After several weeks of Bush-administration-imploding-amidst-scandal and Kerry-talking-about-jobs-at-Georgetown-University, today we finally have a headline informing us that our strong-on-national-security nominee considers Bush's foreign policy "ineffective."
Really, John?
Buried in today's New York Times story about Rice possibly testifying before the 9/11 panel is the following tidbit:
This adviser said that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser and political strategist, wanted to move the election away from questions like "Were there intelligence failures?" and to put the focus instead on which candidate could better protect against any future efforts by terrorists to attack the United States."If we're going to have a discussion about W.M.D. and intelligence failures and Osama bin Laden, that's not an election George W. Bush wins," the adviser said. "If it's about who keeps you safer, that's the ground we want to be on."
So he's going to keep us safer, even though he's failed miserably at it so far. Fascinating.
Perhaps Kerry's speechwriters could lift some of the following -- ain't it funny how times change?
It might be well if you ask yourself are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe? That we're as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then I think your choice is very obvious as to who you'll vote for. If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.
From today's Note, a brilliantly clever bit of insight on this year's election dynamics:
With John Kerry -- like a blind squirrel -- feeling his way toward it'stheeconomystupidchangeversusmoreofthesameanddon'tforgethealthcare, the Bush-Cheney-Matalin campaign is sounding a lot like the Bush-Quayle-Matalin campaign.
but it didn't matter in the least. My opinion of John Kerry hasn't changed much, but godspeed to him. Here's hoping that Geov Parrish's newest take on the election is more accurate than the last one I posted.
For God's sake, someone needs to hold the bastards accountable for what they've done.
Why has everyone in the press apparently decided Kerry will win Washington tomorrow (the AP is using the phrase "virtually unchallenged in three weekend elections")? The only poll putting him ahead was of Democrats overall, not likely caucus-goers. I think the national pundits underestimating to which the extent that the Democratic caucuses in Washington are a dyed-in-the-wool-liberal acitvity. Unlike Iowa, this is not an event many Democrats are used to attending every four years, and I don't see a lot of enthusiasm to get up on a Saturday morning and vote for John Kerry.
The question: if I'm right, and Dean wins, will this be reported as an upset and a setback for Kerry, whom the press is on the verge of declaring the nominee? More importantly, will it perceived that way by the netroots, who are already showing renewed enthusiasm on the bat? Could a win in Washington translate into strong showing -- or even a win -- in Maine the next day?
Geov Parrish remains one of my favorite political columnists, years after I first read him in Eat the State!, a lefty rag from Seattle. His latest colum in the Seattle Weekly is priceless:
Much has been made of the apparent delight of Karl Rove and company over a possible matchup with Howard Dean, but Kerry can’t be much better. Bush would spend six months repeating five words: “Massachusetts. Liberal. Senator. Washington. Insider.” Voters would supply two more: “Stiff. Boring.”
Salon today has got a very insightful narrative by a Deaniac on the campaign's rise and fall.
Everyone is now making two basic points -- and I think they're connected -- about how the campaign imploded in Iowa. First, the mousepads-to-shoeleather transition never quite came together: the campaign didn't figure out how to effectively use all that grassroots passion from people with no political experience. Second, Dean got off-message somewhere along the way.
Frankly, any moron can come to those conclusions. But I think the only way to understand the first point is to see it from the perspective of someone in the campaign. And the Salon piece matches up with a lot of what I've heard and read from people who were in Iowa, and to some degree with what I saw happening at the macro-level:
The script we'd been given by interns in their 20s at the headquarters downtown had suggested that we tell Iowans how many miles we'd flown to talk to them, but credibility may be inversely proportional to the physical distance between two people's homes. Knocking on doors in Des Moines for six days cured me of the delusion that we could weave a community -- or even an efficient precinct organization -- out of e-mails and blog posts from virtual strangers, people whose hands I would never shake, whose faces I would never see. All politics, said the late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, is local. Des Moines taught me that it is visceral as well. The virtual world can transmit a message in an instant, but only flesh-and-blood people -- neighbors talking to neighbors -- can rebuild civic life.
The second issue -- Dean's message -- is more complicated. But the writer comes closer than most in the chattering class in noting that "Dean has not found the words to describe an alternative American future." (In fact, I think he has, but he hasn't been using them lately.)
These questions are important not just for the too-soon Dean postmortems, but because they are really the long-range factors that progressive politics hinges on iin November and beyond. Whoever the party nominates in July, we still need to figure out how to effectively mobilize a new generation of political activis