Google News Democratic Primary Poll for 2/21/2004 (FINAL EDITION)

		This Week (2/13)			Last Week (2/13)
1	John Kerry	34700	45.3%	+12.0	1	26000	33.3%
2	John Edwards	24000	31.4%	+8.3	3	18000	23.1%
3	Dennis Kucinich	9250	12.1%	+3.3	4	6940	8.9%
4	Al Sharpton	8580	11.2%	+2.3	5	6850	8.8%

Well, Dean is out, and I'm calling it quits on the Google News poll. The race between Kerry and Edwards still isn't decided, but the real purpose of this poll was detect trends in news coverage and how they followed or lead to trends in the political process. I think, at least in the case of Dean, it did a pretty good job of highlighting the whole phenomena of his campaign.

But really, who cares anymore about the media share at this point in the race?

It's been fun doing this. But my number crunching days are over. At least until 2008.

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.)

Who has the power?

Aziz on Dean Nation ponders:

I'm struck by the tone of the majority of the articles on Dean via Google News. It's a veritable love-fest, with editorials and laudatory odes to the campaign for its innovation, impact, success, blah blah blah.

Now that we're done, they pour sugar on the wound? It reminds me of the curious timing of the mea culpa from Diana Sawyer and ABC about the overplayed Dean Scream. This behavior isn't a salve for anything save their consciences.

I am reminded of an episode of Buffy in which the Slayer Watcher's council comes back into town to decide whether to take Buffy back into their good graces (she walked out on them in a previous season) before giving her some information she needed. They proceeded to put her through all sorts of tests and generally flustering her to no end. That is, until she realized that she didn't need to jump through any hoops for them because they needed her more than she needed them. They wouldn't have come back if that were not the case.

Similarly, the establishment media and party may not have liked Dean as presidential candidate, but they liked the money and volunteers that he was bringing into the race and they want some of that gold for themselves.

What that means is that we still have the power.

The shape of things to come

Kos has some interesting comments about how McCain-Feingold, far from hurting the Democrats because of its restrictions on soft-money, may actually help the Dems in the long run. I agree. Why? Because it will force them to actually start paying attention to the concerns of the small donors whose money they so desperately need and when they start paying attention to those concerns they will win more of their votes.

What a concept?

Kos goes on to question the credit Dean is getting for the innovations in small-donor fundraising:

I firmly believe that Dean is getting too much credit for this. The blogosphere existed, and was healthy, before Dean came along. And it's healthy and still existing post Dean. What Trippi did was simply recognize the value of the blogosphere and harnessed it for his campaign. He didn't create it. In exchange for $20 million raised online the Dean campaign gave the blogosphere political legitimacy.

I think I understand his point here. Dean and Trippi didn't so much innovate as they simply were the first to tap into a potential that was there all along but which, before McCain-Feingold, just wasn't needed. In a similar way it could be said that many of the great discoveries in history were more a matter of the inevitable events of the times. If Einstein hadn't lived would relativity never been codified? Of course not.

But, while Dean and Trippi can't be called the creators of small-donor fundraising, the significance of their discovery should not be discounted. They, along with Chandler, proved that Dems can be competitive with Republicans in raising money without having to go to the same well as the Republicans to get their money. The liberating impact of this discovery has a huge potential to reshape American politics. We have only seen the first glimmers of that potential.

Update: On further thought, and after reading some of the comments to Kos post, I think Kos is wrong to discount Dean's importance. Yes, Dean and Trippi did not invent internet based fund raising. But as many commentors to his post have pointed out, just setting up a web site and a blog didn't bring the money into Dean's campaign. It was also the message.

It was the melding of message to fundraising apparatus that made the difference. If all the Dems learn from Dean (and Chandler) is that they can just put up a bat and wait for the money to roll in then they will be sadly disappointed. If they want that money they will have to give those small donors something worthwhile to donate to. That is what could be so revolutionary about this new kind of politics. 21st century, big-time politicians may just have to start paying attention to the concerns of the little guy.

And isn't that what McCain-Feingold was supposed to be about?

A fitting tribute

"Make Your Own Kind of Music" (requires Quicktime)

Talk Hard!

I've been reading a lot of post-mortems the last few days and comments on same from various bloggers and comments to those bloggers comments, leading, of course, to a bit of comment overload.

But I do have one more comment to add to the mix: I was struck by the repeated comments by many that the Dean legacy would only have meaning if it resulted in a continued rise in "insurgent" campaigns against the old-style political machine. That machine may still have had enough energy to strike down Dean (as mentioned in the previous post), but would it be able strike down multiple campaigns? Could the viral strategy of the Dean campaign lead to a new viral politics that produces more independently minded politicians who are not beholden to the establishment?

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies, a little picture called "Pump Up The Volume". PUTV has some of the standard elements of a teen-angst drama, but it manages to move beyond the confines of the formula to present a compelling image of the powerless standing up and exerting the power that they never realized they had. I might call the movie a "guilty pleasure" but I'm not the least bit guilty about enjoying it.

***SPOILER WARNING****

PUTV is the story of a high school run by a repressive principal and her minions (the football coach and the school guidance counselor) who are more interested in boosting the performance rating of the school than in actually teaching the kids they are responsible for. Towards that end, the principal black-balls "troubled teenagers" and kicks them out of school, thus brining up the overall school rankings and winning plaudits for her inspirational leadership (ahh, the wonders of standardized testing).

Into this mix comes Mark (played by Christian Slater), a shy teenager whose family has just moved to town because his father was hired as commissioner of the local school system. His father is oblivious to the kind of actions the principal is taking at the school. He only sees the high marks and not the lives wasted by the quest for those marks.

Mark, has problems making friends and withdraws to his basement where he uses a small transmitter his father bought him to run a pirate radio station. He adopts an on-air personality whose moniker is Happy Harry Hardon ("Talk Hard!" is the slogan of his show). Happy Harry is the mirror image of the shy Marl from the "real" world. He cracks jokes about masturbation, spins obscene and profane music about sex and violence, and rails against the rampant angst and despair he sees all around him.

To Mark's surprise, his show, which he never expected anyone to listen to, becomes an instant hit amongst the kids at his high school. Unbeknownst to him, Mark has tapped into something that he wasn't even consciously aware of and becomes the head of a rebellious movement in the high school halls (sound familiar?) Mark is at once both thrilled and freaked out by the influence he wields over the kids around him. After all, he's just this shy geeky kid who has no more clue about what it all means than anyone else. All he wants is someone to tell him what he should do. Yet now all these desperate kids are looking to him for the answers.

The establishment powers (the principal, coach, guidance counselor and even his father (at first)) work hard to shut down this revolution within their midst. Showing once again that the greatest fear of those in power is that those they wield influence over might realize that they aren't as powerful as they want to appear.

In the end Mark is tracked down and arrested. But as he is being dragged away by the police he calls out to the crowds of kids around him to "Talk Hard!". As the screen fades to black we hear the sound of other young kids crackling in the ether as their own pirate radio shows blossom all around the country.

***END SPOILER WARNING****

I would hope the analogy here is obvious enough for everyone to see it.

Whether the slogan is "Talk Hard" or "You Have The Power", the message is the same: we can change the world. Perhaps only in small, but still significant, ways. But we can't do it if we aren't willing to step outside our presumed limits and take chances. "Failing" on an individual level is impossible so long  as we can inspire others to achieve great things.

In that sense, Howard Dean will have failed only if we fail to fight on.

Talk Hard!

Defining failure

Now there will be some who will argue that the Dean campaign's "failure" is an indication that the point-to-point, bottom-up, not-driven-by-professional-political-consultants style campaign doesn't work. Vince Stehle, writing for the Guardian Unlimited, argues differently:

The lesson of the Dean implosion is not that internet-based campaigns are inherently weak, but that the combined force of traditional media outlets and the Washington political establishment working in concert are still strong enough to contain the new form of political organizing.

The viral force of the Dean campaign may be subsiding in this electoral cycle. But like other viruses, it has not gone away for good. And there is no way of knowing what it will look like, or how powerful it will be, next time it appears.

I strongly believe that the Dean campaign wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful as it was if the old-boy network wasn't in serious disarray. Dean, for all of his remarkably organizational and fund-raising success, wouldn't have ever been the front-runner if a Kerry or an Edwards had run a strong campaign from day one. It was only when the Democratic body politic was threatened by the viral marketing strategies of the Dean campaign that it responded. Once again proving that some Democrats are more willing to fight it out with other Democrats than they are with Republicans.

The fact that they succeeded in derailing Dean's candidacy only proves that the old-boy network still has some life in it. But if they are to defeat the Republicans in the long-term (and that means more than just beating Bush) they are going to have to show as much strength and unity in putting down the GOP as they showed in putting down Dean.

I have my doubts, but I would be glad to be proven wrong.

If he's nuts then what does that make you?

That's all I could think while reading this.

I suspect its more likely that McEntee wanted Dean to bow out earlier in order to save him, McEntee, from further embarrassment. It looks to me like he needs to do some serious soul searching before he explains his own "mistakes" on someone else.

Gore and a warning

I have heard it suggested that Gore's endorsement was what galvanized the establishment (party and media) into realizing that, "Holy shit, this guy might actually win!" and from that point on they had it out for Dean.

Well, there is probably some truth to that, but it isn't the whole truth I am afraid.

My own particular theory is that Gore's endorsement backfired on Dean specifically because it added to the sense of inevitably about his nomination and that pissed off a lot of Democrats who had not yet been sold on Dean. Gore didn't help matters with his talk about how Dems should unite behind Dean even before a single vote had been cast That kind of talk may have pushed some leaners over the fence away from Dean specifically because they didn't like being told what they should do with their vote.

I think we can blame the campaign as much as anyone on that perception. Dean made some comments about how no one should celebrate before the vote was cast, but they should have done more to urge his supporters to tone down the premature triumphalism. It may be part of what lead some people to judge Dean as to arrogant for the job.

I share part of the blame for this. I tried to avoid crowing, but I didn't do enough to stop others from doing it even though I worried about what it might do. I didn't want to rain on people's parade.

Oh, and just so you know, some Kerry supporters are making similar annoying noises about the inevitability of Kerry and how everyone should unite behind him even before the nomination process is complete. To which I say, "Watch it!"

The past and the future

There are lots of post-mortems being written on the Dean campaign (I wonder who in the campaign will get the first "insider" book contract?). One of the best I have read so far is by William Greider for The Nation. Greider is fair in his acknowledgement of faults both in Dean and in his opponents and in the media (especially the media) but he also acknowledges many of the grander things about Dean that get lost in the noise:

[...] I already feel nostalgia for his distinctive one-liners:

"Too many of our leaders have made a devil's bargain with corporate and wealthy interests, saying 'I'll keep you in power if you keep me in power.'"

"As long as half the world's population subsists on less than two dollars a day, the US will not be secure.... A world populated by 'hostile have-nots' is not one in which US leadership can be sustained without coercion."

"Over the last thirty years, we have allowed multinational corporations and other special interests to use our nation's government to undermine our nation's promise."

"There is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with and that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are. We need to find a way in this country to understand--and to help each other understand--that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings."

"In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is the people, not the media or the financial system or mega-corporations or the two political parties, who have the power to create change."

Makes me want to work for the guy all over again! I can't but feel if more people had heard these messages that Dean would have wiped the floor with both Kerry and Bush. Unfortunately, while the Dean campaign was good at dealing with new media, they were deficient in dealing with old media (and were, perhaps, deluded by notions that they didn't need to care about old media anymore).

[...] Dean's big mistake was in not recognizing, up front, that the media are very much part of the existing order and were bound to be hostile to his provocative kind of politics. To be heard, clearly and accurately, he would have had to find another channel.

For the record, reporters and editors deny that this occurred. Privately, they chortle over their accomplishment. At the Washington airport I ran into a bunch of them, including some old friends from long-ago campaigns, on their way to the next contest after Iowa. So, I remarked, you guys saved the Republic from the doctor. Yes, they assented with giggly pleasure, Dean was finished--though one newsmagazine correspondent confided the coverage would become more balanced once they went after Senator Kerry. Only Paul Begala of CNN demurred. "I don't know what you're talking about," Begala said, blank-faced. Nobody here but us gunslingers.

Begala, a man who I have otherwise admired, had two conflicts of interest in this battle. He was both a political and a media insider. He was threatened by what Dean represented on two fronts. He can deny it but we know the truth.

Greider points the way towards a possible future:

[...] The Dean campaign demonstrated, most dramatically, that people can make their own politics via the Internet and elsewhere by raising lots of money from outsiders, i.e., mere citizens.

This momentous knowledge is liberating--if people figure out how to use it in other places. I can imagine, for instance, insurgent challenges launched by young unknowns against Congressional incumbents, especially in Democratic primaries. Most of these incumbents haven't faced serious opposition in years. At a minimum, it would scare the crap out of them--always healthy for politicians. In my Washington experience, nothing alters voting behavior in Congress like seeing a few of their colleagues taken down by surprise--defeated by an outsider whose ideas they did not take seriously.

Scare the crap out of them indeed. And also intrigue them immensely. How many of them, upon seeing the potential power of a Dean lead or Dean inspired organization wouldn't go out of their way to make nice with that group? The campaign had the right idea on this when they directed their supporters to donate to the campaign of Cong. Boswell. They need to do more of this if they are to turn this "movement" into something longer lasting.

Atrios had some interesting comments on this today. He noted the online success of the Chandler campaign, but he also pointed out that not every congressional candidate can expect similar success if they all start going after the same money pot. There may be a lot of money out here in, but it won't mean crap if it is spread to thin.

Here's what Dean should do and he should do it sooner rather than later: come out with a list of ~10 congressional candidates (the Dean's List) that the Dean corps could focus their time and money on. I know that Joe Trippi worked out such a list that the campaign would target if Dean got the nomination. That Dean didn't succeed in that endeavor doesn't mean he might fail in the task of delivering a Democratic congress.

Imagine what a nice inaugural present that would be for a President Kerry or President Edwards!

On the bright side

A lot of the campaign material that Dean generated says "Dean for America" not "Dean for President". The former is still true even if the latter is no longer operative, so you can keep on wearing those buttons and displaying those bumper stickers.

Julias Dean

Lambert shows me why I will probably never be a world-class blogger.

What has changed

Dean just went from being a stock option to an IRA. Many of us supported him with the hope of a rapid return on investment. We were disappointed. But we aren't selling our shares yet. This investment will pay off eventually. We just can't retire as early as we would have liked.

In favor of longer seasons

I agree with Eric:

Having a Democrat wrap up the nomination in the beginning of process prevents people form taking a good hard look at his flaws before deciding who to choose, and increases the likelihood of buyer�s remorse�a la Dukakis.  It also takes the Democrats and their framing of the issues out of the news. This primary season has done nothing but good for the party and for the nation�s debate.  The longer it goes on, the longer the Bush team will be incapable of defining things the way they want them defined.  (By the September convention, it will be Kerry who deserted his National Guard post.) [...]

I have been arguing for a long time that an extended primary season could be a good thing for the Democrats. The idea behind the compressed schedule appears to be that, if there is little time for fighting, the rancor of the process won't spoil the nomination at the end (ala 68, 72, and 80). I think this is a fundamentally naive approach. First of all, if people really want to fight with each other they will fight with each other regardless of whether the campaign last six weeks or six months. Furthermore, the bad blood of those elections are more a result of the immature personalities involved then the length of the political season. There is no on in the fight this primary season who would pull the kind of crap Kennedy did in 1980 when he declined to shake Carter's hand on the podium of the convention.

And the comment about the extended primary season providing good press for the anti-Bush argument has been repeated by many others. Hesiod has been arguing this for a LONG time.

With regard to you know what

I have lots of thoughts with regard to Howard Dean this morning, but nothing organized enough to put into pixels. Besides, I've already read several excellent comments from other bloggers this morning who have already said a lot of what I could say (Billmon's is one of the best so far). I guess if I really wanted to put something down about this I should have avoided reading other comments first.

Winning

With regard to our impact on the political system, Kos makes a pretty good argument that we have already won.

And the key to all of this is us. While the party leaders in DC were lamenting their sad lot in life, Democrats started turning out in droves to cast ballots in the Democratic primary. Even after Kerry ran away with it, they still came out in record numbers. And those "fired up Democrats" were also talking to their friends and neighbors and coworkers, so Bush's poll numbers dropped some more.

It wasn't the party leadership that led -- it was us. It was the blogosphere. It was people who wouldn't know how to turn on a computer. It was me. It was you. We took control of this party, and they never saw it coming.

And sure, like any seismic shift in the status quo, there are those who resist. But they'll be roadkill. The DNC, DSCC and DCCC all have blogs now. So do allied party organizations like the New Democrat Network.

So while some may crow about Dean's demise, and the demise of the blogs and the Internet, their victory was phyrric. If the Dean supporters were being marginalized, if the Netroots strategy was discredited, I would be unemployed. But my firm has never been in greater demand.

We demanded a voice in the process, and we got it.

We won. The Democratic Party's grassroots won. The question now is what we do with our newfound influence.

I agree that we have influenced the campaign tremendously. Far more than the worst critics would be willing to acknowledge. But the fight certainly isn't over yet. I think Kos is simply trying to give heart to those who think nothing was accomplished for all their hard work. They are wrong.

But the fight isn't over yet. In many ways, it will never be over.

Toward's the future

Back last fall when the Dean campaign was riding high, the campaign directed its supporters to contribute money to the re-election campaign of Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell. This call netted Boswell's campaign more than $50,000 in a 24 hour period and caught a lot of people's attention. It was meant to be an early demonstration of a "master plan" Joe Trippi was working on to not only win the White House but to also win back Congress as well.

Well, the plan for Dean to win the White House has pretty much collapsed, but the plan for Congress could still go forward and there are hints that this just may happen in this NY Time's article on Dean's course after Wisconsin:

Officials said they are discussing ways to use Dean's network to help elect Democrats to Congress, action that effectively, but not directly, support Kerry's agenda as president. Scores of campaigns aides were making plans to leave their jobs after Tuesday.

This might be a better strategy for Dean to follow than the simple "endorse Kerry and get out of the way" step that might piss off some of his more dedicated supporters. I've already heard ideas for something called the Dean's List, an organizational and fundraising apparatus to win back the congress for Democrats who are more interested in enacting real Democratic change.

I will mourn the passing of the Dean presidential campaign as much as anyone. But I remain stoked about the potential for the future despite the shattering of some of our grander dreams.

More hints

Roy Neel posts something of a non-denial denial with regard to Dean dropping out after Tuesday.

I just talked to Gov. Dean a few minutes ago and can tell you unequivocally, that no decision has been made about the nature of our campaign after Wisconsin, that he is determined to go forward, keep fighting, to advance the message of this movement all the way, to defeat George Bush, to change American politics. "I want to say to all of you who have been working so hard for so long for this campaign to keep the faith, keep fighting for what Dean for America is all about. I am with you all the way!"

The key here is that there is no statement that Dean will go forward to win the nomination, only that he will do what is necessary to defeat George Bush. That there is no plan, one way or the other, for what happens after Wisconsin is telling.

I say this not to be discouraging but only to point out that Governor Dean is a pragmatist (a quality that attracted me to him in the first place) and, as such, he isn't going to work towards a particular goal if he doesn't think doing so will ultimately prove beneficial. That does not mean he is in it only to win for himself. If that were all he were interested in I think he would have dropped out 1-2 weeks back. He has to know that the nomination is almost certainly out of his reach. But if he could have a positive influence on the race by staying in it until the convention I'm certain he would do so. The fact that he wants to continue the fight against the forces he has worked against for the last two years tells me that he is thinking long and hard about how to transform his campaign into something longer lasting.

And, as painful as it might be to some to admit it, keeping his presidential campaign alive might just prove counter-productive to that goal.

Here's hoping for the best.