Perhaps they will listen to one of their own?

Dick Meyer, Editorial Director of CBSNews.com and veteran political reporter of 20 years takes his colleagues to the woodshed for their handling of the "Dean Scream".

It's another fact of life that Dean gave the late-night comedians great material. The Dean Scream jokes are terrific, as is the gag picture someone just e-mailed of the offending Dean choking a cat.

But the press corps' decision that the Scream was serious is a bit more disturbing. One of the many character flaws common to the species 'reporter' -- one that I have in spades -- is an exaggerated pleasure in the fall of the mighty. There is some of that happening with Dean right now. I don't get too worked up about the media "making" or "creating" stories; there is no way for that not to happen in modern government and politics. But this time I do think Dean is getting a very bad rap.

Meyer goes on to point out that reporters on the scene didn't seem to see anything odd about Dean's speech. He also highlights one of the most annoying hypocrisies in all this: political journalists keeps complaining about candidates who are to slick, artificial and dependent on autobiographical sob-stories. Yet when a candidate comes along who isn't like that they complain about him being to rough around the edges and not willing enough to share personal details about their life.

Make up your mind people!

Compare and contrast...

... the media coverage of Howard Dean's "Yeargh!" moment with the coverage of Ronald Reagan's "I paid for this microphone!" outburst back in 1980.

If a Republican shows emotion it means they are passionate and care enough to get angry.

If a Democrat shows emotion it means they are imbalanced, nuts, kooky, over the top and just generally deranged.

Google News Democratic Primary Poll for 1/23/2004

		This Week (1/23)			Last Week (1/16)
1	Howard Dean	16000	22.9%	-0.7	1	9700	25.9%
2	John Kerry	14300	20.5%	+6.8	2	5270	14.1%
3	John Edwards	12700	18.2%	+3.2	3	3940	10.5%
4	Wesley Clark	9570	13.7%	+2.5	4	5070	13.5%
5	Joe Lieberman	7760	11.1%	+0.7	6	4580	12.2%
6	Dennis Kucinich	5450	7.8%	+0.8	7	1910	5.1%
7	Al Sharpton	4000	5.7%	-0.8	8	1910	5.1%

Last week I said we would see how the caucus effects media coverage. Now we see it. Kerry and Edwards both get huge boosts from their 1st and 2nd place showings in Iowa. Dean's overall numbers really don't drop that but his share is eaten away by the rise of Kerry and Edwards. However, Gephardt's dropping out tends to obscure this impact.

Still, for as many stories as there are about Kerry's unexpected victory there are as many stories about Dean's unexpected third-place showing and the "Dean Scream" that followed.

Could Joe Lieberman be out by this time next week? Likely I would think, since he really has nothing to base his candidacy on in the future.

Could Dean be out by next week? Not likely. He'd have to finish 4th before I think he would even consider packing it in and he still most likely has the strongest national campaign running. I think that anything below a strong 2nd on Tuesday will probably continue the slow bleed of support and eventually doom his candidacy. But his strong media performances yesterday combined with stubborn New Hampshire pride could produce yet another surprising campaign story by this time next week.

The following is a chart of the Google News Media Share over the last few months:

(Methodology: All numbers are taken from the hit counts when searching on the Google News Service for news stories containing each candidate's name. Click on each name to rerun the search. You will get different results as the numbers are constantly changing. I make absolutely no claim that these numbers have any real meaning.)

Still more evidence?

Then there's this one day sample of the Suffolk University tracking poll that shows a jump for Dean of 5 points and a fall for Kerry of 7 points (sample of only 200 for the day of course. The full three day result still shows Kerry in the lead an can be found here).

More Teflon Evidence?

Check out this AP story from Ron Fournier ("Dean getting second look from N.H. voters"). In it we have the reports of five of those voters:

Ed Hennessy, who deserted Dean last week (apparently even before Iowa) but who now says:

"[...] I'm back in his camp. It was just a slip of the tongue [a reference to the Dean Scream moment -- Chris], and nobody's perfect," Hennessy said. "I've got to give him credit for speaking from his heart."

Larry O'Sullivan, who said that Dean had not been on his short list even before Iowa but who now says:

"[...] here I am because of the impression he gave in the debate, despite the fact that he looked like a yahoo a couple days before in Iowa. I think he made up for it,"

Kim Lindley-Soucy was not a supporter, certainly after Iowa, but now says:

"He comes across as honest, even when it hurts,"

Patricia Fields, who thought Dean was "a bit wild" but that the media made too much out of the Iowa speech and now says:

"I think he was too tame to tell you the truth. I hope he doesn't back down,"

Gloria Kelley, who still has her doubts but also says:

"I think I'll give him a second look, if the media doesn't mind."

Now it is possible that Fournier is cherry-picking quotes and that there might still be plenty of New Hampsherites who have been permanently turned off from Dean. But if these reports are indication then Dean may just have some teflon left.

Could the old Dean teflon be making a come back?

I've noticed in the last 24 hours a marked increase in comments, both online and offline, along the lines of "on subsequent viewing of Dean's Iowa speech it really doesn't look as bad as I first thought." It may be that the media's overkill on this story may actually garner Dean some sympathy. Their continuous playing of it has given more people the opportunity to notice things about it that they didn't notice the first time and that may account for the softening of opinion on it.

Combine that with Dean's apparently good performance in both the debates and the Sawyer interview (I didn't see either unfortunately) and we may be seeing the re-appearance of the same teflon that previously turned negative Dean stories into positive Dean stories.

At this point I think the Dean campaign should do two things:

1) Build expectations for a 2nd place finish in NH. With many people speculating about possible 3rd and 4th place finishes, a strong 2nd against the resurgent Kerry would do wonders to launch Dean's own "comeback kid" storyline (and short-circuit Kerry's in the process). A 2nd place finish would put Dean in good position to beat the rest of the field in subsequent weeks if nothing else by the process of attrition.

2) Bring out Judy Dean more often (a Larry King interview might be good). I understand she was dynamite on Sawyer last night and added a real human touch to Dean's persona. I hate the fact that so many people base their political decisions on factors like this, but if that's the world we live in then Dean may just have to work with it.

Interesting choices

Here's the front page of the New York Times:

The Washington Post:

The Boston Globe:

Kerry's showing in Iowa was impressive, but the media still seems to think that Howard Dean is the story of the moment. And each of these photos make it look as if it is the rest of the field that has to come to Dean and not the other way around. All in all it looks like yesterday was a very good media day for Dean.

(all images extracted from this thread over on the dailyKos).

Good advice from a hostile source?

Hugh Hewitt, a nationally syndicated radio show host and blogger I have never read before (and someone who, I suspect, supports Bush over any of the Democratic candidates), has some good suggestions for how Dean should address the media distortions during tonight's debate. Hugh "gets it" in the way I've talked about before. His draft hits the essential point that no Democrat is safe from the kind of distortions that Dean has been subject to.

It may be to late for Dean to overcome the damage. But maybe he can slap enough sense into the rest of the field before it is to late for them.

Supporting media distortions for short-term political gain

It could be argued many different ways whether Dean's Iowa speech was politically smart or not. By itself it was not any worse than your typical rally-the-troops political barn-burner. I bet you could make a quick reel of similar performances by most prominent politicians. But given the angry Dean fact-esque, it may have been politically unwise for him to give the media that kind of raw meat.

But what is really stupid is the way some Democrats have become willing propagators of the media's spin on Dean's performance. The last thing we, as Democrats need is to validate the media's distortions by supporting them for our own political advantage. Yet that is just what a lot of Democrats, some who dislike Dean intensely and are reveling in his troubles, are doing. By doing so, they are digging their own future graves because some day that media distortion machine will be focused on them and then where will be the people who will defend them?

Democrats have got to understand that the attacks on Dean are primarily because he is a Democrat, not because he is Howard Dean, and that all of the current prominent Democrats can and will be subjected to the same kind of abuse.

I fear that the Democrats as a whole still haven't gotten this basic fact of life. It may require yet another humiliation before enough of them "get it" to make a difference.

Dividing the Democrats

I've been thinking about how the four leading candidates for the Democratic nomination seem to be close reflections of four divisions within the Democratic rank-n-file. From my perspective there are two major divisions each having two minor divisions within them.

The first major division is on the question of whether the current Democratic leadership has failed the Democratic rank-n-file. Within the group that believes that it has, there are two divisions that are represented, respectively, by Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. The primary thing that seems to divide the two groups is who will best be able to succeed in "throwing the bums out" (the electability question again). The Dean side also seems to be more inclined to publicly link the Democrat leadership with those "bums" even though the level of frustration with the bums appears to be about equal in both groups.

The other major group consists of those Democrats who are not convinced, yet, that Democratic problems are primarily because of ineffective leadership. They recognize that the party is failing, but they don't blame the leadership. The division within this group is over who best can deal with the problem. Is it the same tried-and-true leadership (represented by Kerry) or some new blood (represented by Edwards).

Right now I would say that all four groups are of about equal size (20-20-20-20) with the remaining 20 primarily breaking whichever way the media winds are blowing today (Kerry right now).

Of course, this is just a rough division of Democrats. Since this is a generalization please don't take this to mean I think that all Dean, Clark, Edwards and Kerry supporters fit into these categories. But this model can be useful for dealing with the inevitable problems that will come about when the nominee is finally selected.

The biggest thing I would warn against is thinking that Dean's 20% means that the discontent is limited only to a small group of disaffected Deaniacs. A large portion of Clark's support comes from Democrats who are equally pissed off with the leadership. It is clear that a large minority of Democrats are sick and tired of what they as appeasers in the leadership. If the things-are-not-so-bad group comes out ahead in the nomination battle (which looks like the safest bet right now) it would be a serious mistake for them to think they can go back to business as usual.

The Democrats have a serious problem no matter who their nominee will be and no one should take this lightly.

Republican Misbehavior

Josh is right that this story about Republican Judiciary Committee staffers breaking into Democratic computers should knock everything else off the front pages. You'll forgive me if I treat that with a bit of cynicism considering how many previous stories should have knocked other stories off the front pages but didn't.

There is no way that this was simply the work of a couple of low-level staffers. This kind of systematic activity over a long stretch of time doesn't go on without someone higher knowing about it. No doubt the Republicans are in full protect-their-asses mode right now. The Democrats shouldn't allow them to get away with simply saying they didn't know it was going on. The Republicans certainly wouldn't give them the same courtesy.

This is at least as bad, if not worse, than the check-bouncing scandal of a few years back that seriously damaged the Democratic leadership in the House.

The constraints of print journalism

I think Kevin may be on to something here about the differences in reporting he sees in print journalism and blog journalism:

One of the problems with print journalism is that there are certain stylistic constraints on how stories are written, and this one is a good example: in order to sound like professional writing, it weaves around the story in an oddly circuitous way, starting with a quote fragment, then an opinion, then a longer version of the quote, then an aside about Kerry's Vietnam service, then another piece of Clark's statement, and then finally a passing reference to the question that this was a response to.

This is typical of news writing, in which it is somehow forbidden to just flatly get to the point and explain exactly what happened (a problem, by the way, that is especially acute in any story with numbers in it). If this had been a blog post, it would have gone something like this:

We were talking to Clark after a house party and someone asked him [fill in text of question here]. Here's what he said:

Complete text of Clark's response here.

Then one of the reporters followed up and asked [fill in text of question] and Clark said blah blah blah.

The difference is pretty obvious. This kind of writing seems perfectly natural in a blog post but is completely out of place in a professionally produced piece of newspaper writing. And yet it's the blog style that actually does a better job of giving you the context for the quote.

A corollary to this thesis is that the unfair implications that sometime sneak into print journalism may not necessarily be intentional but just the consequence of the constraints of print journalism. Michael Cousineau, the writer of the original article that inspired Kevin's rumination, may not have necessarily been trying to imply that Clark was dissing Kerry. The constraints of print journalism that Kevin has identified here may make it difficult for all but the best writers to avoid this kind of mistake.

Boom... Bust... Then...?

There's an interesting article in Salon today ("Howard Dean's fatal system error") asking the question whether Dean's campaign was just another example of a dot-com bust. It's a question that is, perhaps, a bit premature (Dean's not dead yet). But it is also an interesting question when placed in the context of past boom-bust cycles. While everyone remembers the booms and busts, many people forget that the busts are often followed by successes in the same field that eventually far outstrip the successes during the initial boom.

After all, even after the dot-com bust, there are a lot of viable internet companies out there today who are demonstrating solid business plans and may eventually become big economic players. Consumer use of the internet continues to increase despite the fact that the internet allegedly when "poof" back in 2000.

Remember the video game bust after the collapse of Atari? Nintendo came along soon afterward and ended up making even more money than Atari ever achieved.

So, even if Dean proves to be more homegrocer.com than eBay, I feel confident in predicting that the internet, online journalism, blogging, etc. will continue to show an increased influence over the political process.

We're here to stay baby!

Dean Wikki

Aziz of Dean Nation has started a Dean Wikki. For those who don't know what that is, a Wikki is a collection of web pages that can be edited by anyone and expanded with as much information as participants want to include. It's a pretty cool collaborative tool.

I'm kind of surprised no one has done this before now. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Yawp!

Walt Whitman:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my
gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

(thanks to Max for posting this first)

Has Dean's time come and gone?

E.J. Dionne argues that Dean was the perfect Democrat for 2003:

What Democrats needed after their disastrous losses in the 2002 election was a backbone transplant. The party's rank and file were clamoring for less timidity in confronting President Bush. The yearning was not just -- or even primarily -- about the war in Iraq. For most, it simply meant having leaders who stopped looking over their shoulders and checking Bush's popularity ratings. Democrats were sick of intimidation and capitulation.

The good doctor Dean answered the need and he soared. What he did not count on is that Democratic presidential candidates are a teachable species. They made adjustments. So did the voters.

The question is, did they really make adjustments or did they just learn how to adopt the style of Dean without the substance of Dean? That's the question I hear a lot of Dean supporters asking, yet it it is one that Dionne seems to be taking for granted. As one Dean supporter I talked to on Monday night said, "Yeah, they are all sounding like Dean. But Dean's the only one I trust to actually back up his words with action."

Dionne is right on several points: Dean did tap into a deep well of Democratic frustration, his base was smaller than expected and his message did not translate as well for those who simply weren't as frustrated as his early supporters. He hit his ceiling sometime back in the October-November time-frame but he never really noticed and adjusted. Dean and Trippi should, perhaps, have been clued into this when they failed to achieve one of Trippi's stated goals: one million supporters by the end of 2003. They made the 500,000 goal on schedule, but then stalled (the number is still only around 580,000). I noticed this back then but, like so many others, I simply didn't feel like putting a damper on the spirit of the campaign by making a point of it. My bad.

But the question remains whether Kerry, Edwards and Clark can continue on the trail-blazed by Dean or whether they are just, as Dean himself quipped several months back, "Dean-Lite".

That's Entertainment!

Shocking (not)

Anna is, of course, a Dean supporter. But if the supporters of other candidates think that her comments about media manipulation are simply sour grapes then I feel sorry for them because they to will face the day when their guy faces the same kind of manipulation.

Until the Democratic party (hell, all of America) wakes up, across the board, and realizes that they are never going to get a fair shake from the media they will continue to lose.

It's as simple as that.

Dean's failure

CJR's Campaign Desk highlights a little reported fact in all the Iowa reporting:

As the Washington Post points out, "Dean led the field among Democrats who had settled on a candidate longer than a month ago. But this group consisted of only three in 10 caucus attendees." Kerry beat "Dean by better than 2 to 1 among the 41 percent of voters who made their decision in the past week."

The real story here is the rise of Kerry and Edwards, rather than the decline of Dean.

So Dean appears to be the candidate of early-adopters. His biggest failure was in making the sale to those who waited until the last minute to make up their mind. Dean may have taken it for granted that his early successes in 2003 would naturally translate into a comparable pickup of support in 2004 (one NPR commentator made an apt comment on Monday night: Dean may have been the perfect Democratic candidate for 2003). Dean did not realize that picking up the late-comers may just require an entirely different dynamic from what works to win over the early support.

I'm coming to the conclusion that Dean's campaign started having troubles from the minute he received Al Gore's endorsement. The endorsement was a good thing, but presenting it as if Dean's eventual nomination was a foregone conclusion apparently struck a lot of voters as presumptuous. It cemented some of the ill-will that was growing within Democratic rank-n-file as well as within the press. Dean did not correct for this misstep and, in fact, did not appear to notice it.

I noticed it myself at the time, but didn't speak up about it in the hope that it would just go away. Perhaps that was my mistake.

I'm not ready to give a eulogy for Dean's campaign yet. He's been written off before and come back to surprise people. But you can only pull the Lazarus routine so many times.

Gored

It's been an interesting couple of days to say the least. I've pretty much reached the conclusion that Dean has been effectively Gored. The whole "anger" meme has become Dean's equivalent of the Gore "liar" meme. It's no more true but it is talked about so much that it has become, in the words of the Daily Show, "fact-esque".

The sad thing about it is that many Democrats will, once again, come to the mistaken conclusion that this is entirely Dean's fault(*). They thought Clinton's problems were Clinton's and Gore's problems were Gore's. The truth is that it can pretty much happen to any Democrat. It probably will happen with Clark (my first thought on his potential Gore-point: paranoia). It most certainly will happen with Kerry (pampered prince of Massachusetts) or Edwards (inexperienced tool of trial lawyers).

At this point I'm not sure any Democrat can avoid it. Preventing it will pretty much require a wholesale reworking of our media/political apparatus. This is not likely to happen anytime soon. It certainly will not until a significant percentage of the populace finally stand up and says "enough!"

That's why I have supported Dean, because he and his supporters are standing up and saying "enough!" It may just be that there aren't enough of us right now to achieve critical mass.

But it is a step in the right direction.

(* This is not to say that Dean is entirely blameless. All myths have there bases in fact. But that does not mean myth should be accepted as fact.)

The morning after

Lots of different thoughts have gone through my head in the last few hours. Some good. Some bad. Some happy. Some sad. I don't think I could hope to put them all down on this blog. But let me just add an amen to this comment from Hesiod:

Fight the good fight. I still think Dean can win this thing.

But I am not so emotionally committed to one candidate over another that I am going to adopt a defeatist and negative attitude. I WANT TO WIN!

All of our top candidates can beat Bush. All of them will take the fight to Bush and refuse to let him get away with the stuff he pulled over the past four years.

So, instead of being upset...you should all be happy! The Republicans know they are in trouble. So let's not bail them out and make our defeatism into a self-fulfilling prophecy!

This goes for all those supporters of other candidates too. You are not getting off the hook here.

I'm trying to ignore both the whining by some Dean supporters and the triumphalism by those who have been railing against him for months. This has never been just about Dean.

I supported Dean from the beginning because he was saying something that needed to be said and that needed to get a wider audience. The Democrats were shell-shocked after 2002 and allowed themselves to get rolled on the war on Iraq and Yet Another Bush Tax Cut. They needed someone to stand up, yell "What I Want To Know..." and slap them out of their stupor.

On that measure alone I would consider my support for Dean to be a success.

Yes, it could be argued that Clark, Kerry and Edwards are just Dean-Lite candidates. It could be argued that they are just repeating Dean's lines but don't really mean it. But then that's where we come in. We are the ones who will have to hold them to what they say (yes, even Dean can't be ultimately trusted to just keep his word).

So the last thing we need is for the Dean Corps to fall apart. We are in the process of rebuilding a party that is in a shambles and it will not be done within the cycle of a single election. We may be able to beat Bush this year. But defeating the apparatus that raised him to the White House will take a lot longer.