February 19, 2004

Postmortem

No doubt over the next (weeks/years), we'll be reading about what went wrong with the Dean campaign. And though I'm tempted to just sit home and sulk, sad because another candidate that I thought could offer real change has lost, I guess I'll throw in my two cents, too.

There are two reasons Dean's campaign failed, one practical, one insiduous. Practical first. The campaign was able, at first, to energize a huge number of people; unfortunately, the problem with a widespread, (mostly) decentralized movement is how to harness that energy in the right direction? When I volunteered a couple of times in New Hampshire, folks were making phone calls to people who had already been called, sometimes within hours. Sooz went to a house to drop off some literature, only to be told that different people had been there the day before. The analogy of the headless chicken comes to mind. There's a fine line between a decentralized grassroots effort and a tight, professional organization; Dean's campaign leaned heavily toward the former.

Second, Dean clearly caught the attention of the power brokers in business and media. What's good for them is a regular pairing of one Democrat and one Republican, who may differ in some things, but fundamentally will play ball with business as usual in government. Kerry offers different leadership than Bush, but not a significant difference. (Please don't read this as "Kerry's the same as Bush"; nothing could be further from the truth. South Knox Bubba has a great chronicle of the worst Presidency in history - read it and realize that a bucket of clams would have done a better job.) But Dean was seen as the candidate who would shake things up; while that appealed to people like me, it terrified the comforted and powerful.

You can, for a large part, chalk up Dean's rise and fall to the media. Their second favorite kind of stories are "the underdog" and their favorite are the "whatever happened to?" With Dean, they got the opportunity to run the two stories almost back-to-back. I'm not even talking about the hysterical assholes at the NY Post; the national media's prophecy that the Iowa speech would be Dean's undoing fulfilled itself within hours. Of course, they later recanted their overcoverage. Thanks, guys. You can join the umpire who blew the Knoblauch tag call and later apologized in the "Too ******* Little, Too ******* Late" Hall of Fame.

So now what? Dean's pledged to keep his supporters in the fight for a better, more progressive America. Good for him. John Edwards is keeping Kerry honest, and gaining momentum. Good for him, too; I like Edwards more and more the more I read about him.

I won't give up. I won't run off with Ralph again. I won't stop talking up the progressive cause. I won't stop dreaming of January 20th when Bush, smirk wiped off his face, hands over the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania to (insert name here). I won't stop dreaming of Rove and Ashcroft and Cheney and Rummy and the rest of the gang are nothing more than embarassing footnotes to history. I hope.

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