Paramendra Bhagat
January 30, 2004
This Was Never Going To Be Easy
Paramendra Bhagat
January 30, 2004
When the Democrats first started lining up to run for President, John Kerry was in the lead. Howard Dean was a nobody. And then Dean was leading from summer onwards. He had the big mo going for him. But his supporters made more news than he did. The greatest grass roots campaign in presidential history was under way. MeetUps were being organized in small towns and big. People were donating, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, in small sums like $20, $50, $100. As Iowa neared both Al Gore and Bill Bradley endorsed him. It looked like Dean would narrowly beat Gephardt in Iowa, and then trounce the competition in New Hampshire, and then on it would be a race versus Bush, the $100 revolution would be launched in earnest, that Dean would call for a dollar for dollar match with George W. Bush himself. Two million people giving a hundred dollars each. Half a million had already signed up. The sky looked a clear blue.
And then it happened. Kerry started catching up in Iowa. I was in the state that day, in its south-east corner. That evening, while the votes were being cast, I read an opinion piece in The Des Moines Register. It claimed Dean had the most sophisticated organization in caucus history. But the results a few hours later were wild. A lot of people must have changed their minds late. I heard the now-famous so-called I Have A Scream speech on NPR while I was driving away: I was perhaps in Illinois already.
By some counts the TV networks replayed the "scream" over 700 times over the following week. Again, and again, and again. That was a telling moment. The actual 3500 enthusiasts that were the primary recipients of the speech were very much part of the uproar: they were not going to be put down by Iowa. The internet audience loved it. There are numerous remixes of the speech and techno vibes online. Suddenly Dean had gone global. But the TV gods without term limits and the party insiders, the heavyweights, the self-styled kingmakers put Dean on the stake for it. And the trickle-down public opinion morphed. Dean is unpresidential, he does not have the temperament to be president, is he even okay! Only today Diane Sawyer has finally done some work to put the speech in perspective, and to present it the way it really happened, and not the edit and play version of it that entered the mainstream. Traditional media flexed its muscle, and did its best to bring down a grassroots campaign that, for the most part, has given it the finger.
So is Howard over? Are the Deaniacs gone like those many dot com companies that were but flashes in the pan? Or are we the Google of this presidential campaign? Here to stay. To rise from the internet ashes, not yet gone public? Who are we? Where are we? What are we?
Dean had "lost" Iowa, but I was looking at the delegate count, and he was leading the pack. Dean "lost" New Hampshire, but Kerry was plagiarizing the Dean themes. He was going to challenge Bush. He was going to raise record amounts of cash online. He was sick and tired of the special interests. He was going to pave the path for "the greatest grass roots campaign in history," and I am quoting him there. He has stolen the Dean style, as have the others. Is imitated to be flattered?
So who is winning? Really.
Howard Dean has changed the Democratic party. A major victory has already been scored. Only a few months ago, Dean was the spoilsport who was not towing the party line, he was too to the left, he was getting away from the center from where Democrats had learned to cowtow to the Bush White House. Now Dean is in. He looks normal. His "anger" has been internalized by all on the stump.
Reality check. Looks like Kerry might do well again on February 3. But this is still the beginning and not the end. This is a race for delegates and that is complicated: "No matter what happens at the coming weeks and months, the Democratic nominee's eventual, exact margin of victory will not -- in fact, it cannot be determined until late July. So stay tuned." And check out the scorecard, Dean has 113 delegates to Kerry's 94. So who is winning, really?
In hindsight, it looks like Dean and Gephardt did each other in in Iowa. Perhaps the others will do each other in on February 3. And perhaps it is political jujutsu on the part of Dean to not run TV ads for February 3, and instead focus on the contests four days later. Let Edwards and Clark bounce around Kerry. Let them spend each other out.
Dean's style might have been copied by the others in the race, but is his style his essence? Not. Look closely at the Howard Dean's Speech to Supporters in New Hampshire. You have to go beyond style to substance. Who has the substance? It is not the Dean style that got the Deaniacs going. A year ago Dean did not even know what a blog was. Today the Dean campaign is organized around the Dean blogs.
You have to look at the substance of what Howard Dean stands for. And then you have to ask, can this guy deliver? Will he able to do it once he is in the White House? On both counts, Dean is way ahead of the competition. Not Kerry, not Edwards are about to copy Dean on the substance. And as the chief executive of Vermont for five consecutive terms, he has already shown he can deliver. He did not gather his "experience" by sitting on committees. He was out there executing. He knows how to run the state machinery.
For now look at the substance.
The question the Deaniacs have to ask is, do we really want change? Real change? How badly do we want it? And how much work are we willing to put to get that real change, one that is a change at the level of substance and not just style?
This was never going to be easy. In a way, the vote defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire are wake up calls to the Deaniacs. If you can not take this, stop complaining about the status quo. If this is hard, things are going to get harder down the road. Can you take it? Can you walk the walk?
How badly do we want it, that is the question. Because Dean is but the vehicle. The campaign is us. It always was us.
We need to get out of our "echo chamber" of fellow Deaniacs, and go out and meet real people, people who are not that online, people who still don't know what blogs are, people who still get most of their news from TV, people who are not aware real change is possible, that ours is a beyond cosmetics campaign. So let's go rumbo!