Wax On! Wax Off!

TAPPED points to what may be the real secret of the Dean campaign's success: it's fun. Specifically, TAPPED talks about all the wonderful goofiness that is rampant on the official campaign blog and, even more so, in the comments section. I've been thinking about this for a while myself and I've realized that it really is a lot of fun to check in every few hours and just read the random comments of Dean supporters around the country. The sheer joy of some of these people is infectious at times and rarely fails to boost me whenever I start questioning whether we actually can bring down Bush. Every few years a new phenom comes along that attracts everyone's attention (a movie, a TV show, this time a political campaign) and everyone else looks on it and tries to figure out what the formula is for its success. What few of the bean-counters fail to appreciate is that those who are in the midst of that success rarely understand why it is working. They just understand that they shouldn't get in the way of a good thing when it is firing on all cylinders. The Dean campaign is a good thing firing on all cylinders and the real genius of Joe Trippi and company is that they have not tried to crack down on it and make it behave in the way that they want it to. How many political consultants do you know who would be willing to take the kind of risks this campaign has? How many of them would be willing to let literally thousands of political neophytes become the primary spokespeople for the campaign? I'm sure many consultants would just cringe at the notion of even considering something like that. Sometimes you just have to let go in order to win. Sometimes the secret of victory is to stop trying so hard.