The big Wednesday Times piece (page 1, above the fold) starts off strong, but then descends into the standard beltway naysaying.
Now of course some naysaying is called for, but with the Dean campaign, it has tended to be the most idiotic hectoring. (And each week that goes by, they realize the stupidity of some of their earlier claims and quit making them, but they still keep coming up with other old-school crap to throw at him.)
First, though, Times journo Jodi Wilgoren makes nails one important criticism. All-white crowds. That's for sure. But isn't the same true of all the white candidates? I don't think anyone has reached that community yet, except Sharpton and Mosely Braun, so it's not like it was to be expected. It's still a problem, but Dean seems to be ahead of his white peers. He hired Mosely Braun's campaign manager a few weeks ago among moves to work on that missing element.
She also talks about "Birkenstock liberals" and "aging flower children and the tongue-studded next generation." I'm not sure what to make of that: lazy? Dishonest? Looking for something and finding it? She may have seen that at a rally or two--I don't know, because I wasn't there. But I have been to meetups, and been online for months now, and read lots of accounts from people I trust, like my editor Joan Walsh at Salon, and we are not seeing that. I am seeing a very white crowd, that's for sure, but a diverse lot within that.
But she really makes a fool of herself with this pathetic attempt at "balance":
It remains unclear how such untraditional rallies will translate into the nuts-and-bolts of nominations like endorsements, voter registration, fund-raising and debates. The campaign also may have trouble keeping people interested and preventing its events in coming weeks from seeming mundane.
Who says those things are the elements essential to win a nomination? Pick it apart and you see it's pretty much BS. Let's take the four "nuts-and-bolts of nominations" one by one: 1) endorsements: those have been fading for decades--does anyone think they're significant anymore? 2) voter registration: what? in a primary? Aside from specialty campaigns like Jesse Jackson, those aren't a traditional primary vehicle. (Does she mean get-out-the-vote? In that case, Dean already has an army of volunteers dwarfing the competition.) 3) fund-raising: she reports in the very piece that Dean raised a million dollars during the 4-day swing, in a slow summer period where his biggest competitors are expected to raise maybe 5-10 in the entire quarter. And Dean has been blowing away the competition in fundraising. This really undercuts her case. 4) Debates. Yes, rallies like this have nothing to do with debate performance. Of course not. Neither do any other tactics. What the hell has that got to do with anything? (And Dean must be impressing someone in the debates, because he has done a ton of them and his numbers keep rising.)
What a bunch of hot air.
It's also ironic that she talks about the danger of struggling to keep people interested. That's exactly what has been so unusual about the Dean campaign. Joe Trippi said early on that all successful campaigns energize lots of people early, but then have nothing for them to do for months, and the people wander away. He said back in the spring that he was going to look for creative ways to engage them, and he has.
A candidate can only swing through each town once or twice a quarter if they're lucky (aside from a few key spots like NH & IA), but Dean supporters gather each month at the meetups to organize and energize themselves. They don't need the candidate there to keep busy. They are doing creative things like writing letters to IA and NH voters, organizing college groups, senior groups, professional groups . . . They're volunteering for public service work in groups, walking in AIDS Walks, marching in gay pride parades . . . (those last two I'm aware of because it's my own demo, but they're all over the place.)
This is the very campaign that has finally made it a priority to harness all that volunteer energy and it's working. How embarrassing to hear her worry about the very thing Trippi is revolutionizing. She must not have been on this story for long.
I do see her larger point about not hitting all the traditional routes like endorsements and labor support, but those are all in decline, and Dean seems to be running second to Gephardt with most of the unions. (And Gephardt is not going to get elected president based on union support. When was the last time that happened?)
But it's so typical of journos to be mired in the past. She sees all the past tactics and can't figure out that someone is actually making a lot of those work, but adding an arsenal of powerful new weapons to his armory. Get your heads out of the sand, journos. It's emabarassing to be affiliated with a profession that tends to be among the most backward-thinking in the country. It's really kind of sad.
I was going to end it here, but I couldn't help wondering why the shallowness of the naysaying. For God's sake, punch some real holes in the Dean campaign. Of course they're doing things wrong, but you're not hitting many of them. Why?
I think the bulk of the press corps is just baffled by the Dean phenom, just can't come close to figuring it out. They know there's a downside here--of course there is--but they can't even figure out what's making the Dean machine run, so how could they comprehend what's wrong with it? So they look at what would be wrong with it if it were Dick Gephardt's campaign and they print that. And they look ridiculous.
Now let's get to the dirty little secret of American Journalism. Journos like to think they're liberal, but they're really traditionalists at heart. And mostly an uncreative lot. And not very deep thinkers. Not dumb by any means, but not a lot of Einsteins in the field either. I went to school with journos and most of the creative ones left the field either before graduation or within ten years after. And then I came back 20 years later, and boy is there a lack of creativity. (In the newspapers and TV, at least. In magazines, and of course books, there is hope. But they're not setting much of the political-coverage agenda.)
There's just very little room for creativity in the daily or even weekly journ field. You churn out stories day after day along the same basic template . . . Uncreative work for mostly uncreative minds. There are some creative ones that stay, but for the most part, their thinking tends to be as mundane as their writing.
They have this set of rules, this little roadmap the campaign is going to follow, these steps that will propel someone to the nomination, and they just expect each successful candidate to follow it. And their pretty little heads just can't figure out what to do when one or two of the candidates don't.
The sad part is someone nearly always breaks the rules. The journos almost always get it dead wrong, yet they return to their stupid playbook year after year anyway, with slight modifications to account for the changes that took them by surprise last time. (And they heckle the generals for always fighting the last war. Can you say projection?)
But once in a great while, someone really changes the rules. Then they're really clueless. Then is now, and it's embarrassing to watch them. Dean is a true phenom, which may or may not burn itself out. Of course he may come crashing down. The momentum is solidly behind him now, but there is no guarantee it won't flame itself out three weeks from now. But regardless of whether he succeeds, his (Trippi's) tactics already have:
Meetups are going to be huge in 2008. So are blogs. Candidates are going to raise tens of millions on the web. Volunteers are going to be marshaled together early and put to effective use, not told to come back three weeks before their state's primary. And more changes are coming every day. (I predict the volunteer groups doing charity work will not revolutionize future campaigns, but I could be wrong.)
At the very least, Dean and Trippi are dramatically changing the process. And they have clearly turned this nine-man race on its head, at least for now. And the press--with a handful of wonderful exceptions--has no idea what to make of it.
So start using your heads guys. It's not that hard. Let go of your damn rulebook for one minute and consider the new playing field being created here, with some of the old rules still applying, some of the new ones eclipsing them. Think. It's really not that hard.
Maybe it's asking too much of these people, though. Of course it is. Can't the newspapers and newsmagazines and networks bring in some real thinkers, and not put them onto the daily grind to turn them into beltway boys just like them? Or maybe they should just consider listening to some of the voices already outside the beltway. Damn. I don't know how to fix their fucked-up profession. It's just deplorable, though.
And it keeps dragging the political process down with it. Thirty to forty years ago, the nomination process was wrestled out of the hands of the party bosses and turned over to the voters and . . . them. They control so much of the process, narrow the field down to jokers they're sure the country is going to pick, and they are so utterly pitiful at it the country is generally disgusted with the choices in November. Yes, I blame them. There are a lot of forces at work, but they are head and shoulders the biggest problem.
Dean is the first solid chance in some time of someone breaking out of their rulebook and getting nominated, and they need to just get the hell out of the way and let it happen. Or let it fail. Dean may fail. But let him fail if he's going to. Quit trying to drag him down for all your stupid reasons you can't understand.
