Calling Dean's bluff?
Though I’ve been a staunch supporter of the presidential candidacy of Dr. Howard Dean for a full year (my first contribution check was dated January 28, 2003), I’ve posted very little here about his campaign. I’m not quite sure why I’ve done little more on the blog than place that Dean for America button and links to local Dean sites over there in the left margin. Perhaps it was because I was, and remain, more interested in doing something for the campaign than writing something about it.
On this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, as the media’s polls show rapid changes in the “expected” outcome of the Iowa caucus, I believe we’ll see the first full test of what has become the Dean campaign’s mantra—that this is a grassroots movement of Americans who had not previously been involved in direct political action, who had not previously worked for a presidential candidate, who had not canvassed or called or leafletted or contributed or caucused. That’s certainly what’s happening here in Seattle, as attested to by everyone from state party insiders to political activists to the many Dean supporters I hear from and hear about every single day.
Pollsters describe their samples in terms like “a random sampling of 502 likely caucus voters statewide” (Zogby, January 18). What that really means is that they’re talking to people known to have attended previous caucuses. But in previous caucuses, says the Dean campaign, attendees were predominantly—nay, overwhelmingly—party, union, and interest-group activists. That’s what Dr. Dean was actually talking about in that Canadian TV interview that was billed as somehow denigrating the Iowa process.
Will attendees at the 2004 Iowa caucuses be like, act like, and, most importantly, vote like the usual suspects who have been populating the caucuses in the last couple of decades? If so, then the polls may accurately reflect a four-way dead heat. But if the thousands of Dean volunteers who have streamed into Iowa to work for their candidate, if the sophisticated computer system that tracks supporters and connects them with information on their caucus locations, if the on-the-ground precinct leaders, coordinators, and workers are able to bring their thousands of newly-activated Iowans for Dean to the caucuses, then the strategies developed and fostered by Joe Trippi and the participants in the campaign just might produce a positive surprise.
Dick Gephardt may have drawn out an increasing proportion of the union “usual suspects”, while John Kerry may have activated the Iowa party hierarchy. I don’t have a good mental image of what might constitute the core of John Edwards’s strength in Iowa. But neither he nor Kerry has the kind of comprehensive organization built by the Dean campaign. Gephardt may be well-organized, but his campaign hasn’t extended its reach into novel constituencies as Dean’s believes it has.
The above may be mere wishful thinking on my part. I may be projecting what I see from inside the Washington campaign (we too have a caucus system, not dissimilar from Iowa’s, and we meet in less than three weeks). I remain cautiously optimistic that Howard Dean and his movement will continue to confound the conventional wisdom when the day is done in Iowa.
In any case, the Dean campaign will continue (the same cannot be said about Gephardt, I suspect). I’m heading across the country to New Hampshire on Wednesday for a full week of volunteer work in the areas of Keene and Portsmouth. It promises to be a thrilling time! However, I probably won’t be able to do much blogging while I’m on the road.
The contrast with my own previous political involvement is instructive, I think. I lived in New Hampshire four years ago. Now, I know the image of the FirstintheNationPrimary is that Granite Staters choose their presidential favorites only after meeting each candidate over coffee three or four times. Well, in 2000 I never saw a single candidate, never went to a single rally, never went to a single houseparty, never attended a single pancake breakfast or church supper, never watched candidate debates or symposia. Once I made my personal selection based on reading the news and some position papers, I stopped paying attention until it came time to vote. After casting my vote (for Bill Bradley, if you must know), I went back to business as usual. No campaign contributions, before or after the primary.
That’s pretty much the way I’d done it for the several decades I’ve been a voter. I was always very interested in politics, but only enough to choose the candidate I would vote for, not to work to influence anyone else’s choice. I almost always selected an eventual loser, both in the nomination process (Bradley, Paul Tsongas in 1992, Bruce Babbitt in 1988) and in the general election (Clinton is my only winner ... well, also Gore with an asterisk). But the last time I actually did something for a presidential campaign was way back in 1976, when I did a little volunteer work for Mo Udall. I actually shook Mo’s hand at a rally in Kentucky, just before becoming perhaps the only person in America to cast two presidental votes for him—I moved from Massachusetts to Kentucky in late 1975, voted absentee in the MA primary on March 2, then changed my registration in time to vote in the May 25 KY primary.
Before this presidential election cycle, then, I had never contributed a dime to a campaign. I had not worked for a candidate in 28 years. Except for the length of my political (non)experience, I think I’m quite typical of today’s participants in the Dean campaign, of those who’ve been working the phones, hosting campaign events, handing out bumper stickers and campaign buttons, organizing our precincts and Legislative Districts, contributing significant amounts of our hard-earned money to the campaign. It’s important enough to me that I forced an organization whose Board I serve on to change its quarterly meeting date, telling them point-blank that I wouldn’t go to the meeting if it conflicted with the Washington caucuses.
Today in Iowa, we’ll learn just how significant the efforts and activities of people like me can really be. Is it an illusion? Is is a bluff? Is it for real? Time (not very much of it) will tell.
Comments
I really, really hope you’re right. The last time I felt as strong about a candidate as I do this time was at my first: McGovern.
That George has endorsed Clark makes me accepting of his candidacy, too, though the only guy pushing fiscal sense and healthcare (and I have no fears about the false hobgoblin of inexperience in foreign affairs) is Howard, and I’d love to see him sweep the first two and beat the CW.
I’ve written my first checks this year—but none to a candidate.
I wrote a check to the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and something called 21st Century Democrats (this one may have been mistaken—I sent them an email about issues and never heard a reply).
And I’m not even a “party guy.” I voted for John Anderson in 1980 (in Kansas) and can readily imagine voting Green in a specific circumstance.
But the Democratic Party is the major institution able to challenge the Republican Party...and that’s pretty important to me in 2004.
Since I’ve already spent some time studying first Kerry, then Clark and Dean, I’m going to spend a few days looking closely at Edwards.
Thanks for the lead-in about being a “party guy”, Rodger. A careful reader of my posting might have caught that a) I was a voter in 1976, and b) the only eventual inauguree I voted for was Clinton.
In 1976, I voted for Gene McCarthy, but Carter won Kentucky without me. Like you, I helped keep John Anderson out of the poorhouse in 1980 (Carter wouldn’t have taken Kentucky even if I’d voted for him). Except for those two elections, I’ve voted for the Democratic presidential nominee—with varying degrees of comfort-- since my first presidential vote in 1972.
I’ve resisted contributing to the DCCC and the DNC so far, because neither group had shown sufficient anti-Bush backbone for my taste; I have written them messages explaining why I haven’t contributed and what might induce me to change my tune, but I don’t recall so much as an acknowledgment of receipt.
Edwards has some compelling arguments on the Bush tax structure—the overwhelming shift of the tax burden away from wealth and capital and toward those who work to earn their income. Aside from that, he carries the conventional mid-line Democratic message, with more style than substance. I don’t think he studied the issues all that closely in the Senate—hence, his war and Patriot Act votes—but he’s a quick study. More seasoning would make him a more compelling candidate.
At least, that’s how I read him.
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Next entry: Ouch
Previous entry: Last week's deaths, belatedly
