Howard Dean's very bad night - Slate

[DaisyUCSB]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2094122/
Howard Dean's Very Bad Night
Why his campaign flopped in Iowa.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004, at 12:02 AM PT


DES MOINES, Iowa—"Prove it or not," Howard Dean told his supporters at a rally Sunday in Davenport. "Now is the time to see if this works," to see if the unorthodox, Internet-fueled campaign assembled by Dean and his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, translates into votes. "Tomorrow, at 6:30 p.m., you can prove it or not." The answer Iowans gave him was a raspberry: Or not.

I attended a West Des Moines caucus Monday night with Dean's Iowa press secretary, Sarah Leonard, and her feeling about the race was that it would be close, so close perhaps that they wouldn't be able to call it that night. She felt it was a three-way race, between Dean, Kerry, and Gephardt. "Edwards, I just don't think you can build an organization in 48 hours," she said. But it wasn't close. Momentum beat organization, both Dean's digital one and Gephardt's analog one. (Leonard did say before the caucus, however, that the rumor that Dean had a hard count of 50,000 was preposterous. "If we had a hard count of 50,000, I'd probably be at the Val Air," she joked, referring to the ballroom site of Dean's caucus night party.)

The results from our caucus reflected the results of the 1,992 other caucuses in the state in one respect: Kerry got twice as many delegates as Howard Dean, four to two (with John Edwards picking up four as well). There were lots of new and first-time caucus participants, so many that the organizers ran out of forms to register them. But they weren't the new voters the Dean campaign wanted. George Davey, the precinct captain for the Dean campaign, said he was hoping for 25 to 50 Dean voters between the ages of 18 and 25, but only one showed up. "I think if we could blame on anyone, blame it on the 18- to 25-year-olds, because they were nonexistent," he said. ....

http://slate.msn.com/id/2094122/

[picus9]

1. That speech killed him.

He looked like a raving lunatic WWF wrestler.

[RUexperienced]

2. I played that speech for my kids and asked them if they thought he

could beat shrub.

I could not get an answer out of them because they were all rolling on the floor laughing.

sigh!!!

[Frederic Bastiat]

3. LOL n/t

[lancdem]

5. I second that!

[Kahuna]

6. And they probably saw the edit speech.. I stayed up..

last night waiting for it to be fully shown again. It was shown on CSPAN. I taped it on my VCR and my hard drive. :7

Gotta go and show it to my mother now! }(

[AP]

15. www.nytimes.com has it too.

[Zech Marquis]

7. I thought I had the wrong channel on!

and on a personal note, yesterday I started a tread on how I was shifting my support to Kerry/Edwards/Clakr, and some of the Dean supporters just went off on me. One even said,"we can make due despite your loss" (or something to that effect) I don't thik Dean will be able to overcome that "speech"! Local people around here are calling hima lunatic, and I lve in one of the biggest Democratic strongholds in the US. ( from Newport News, part of Norfolk, and finally Portsmouth and part of Chesapeake).

[DaisyUCSB]

9. All the local people in Santa Barbara are saying the same thing

That speech is really going to be the big joke from now till NH

[Snivi Yllom]

11. oh come one

Dean gets smacked on MSNBC all night, he got beat up by all the other candidates for 2 weeks and now he has to take lumps here too?

Get ready, Dean is coming back. He wont quit.

[sistersofmercy]

12. Yes I watched only part of it and can say if he doesn't tone down, he

doesn't have a chance in MO. Missouri is classic about polite politics, Dems and Repubs live and work side by side here. We discuss politics but in a respectful and polite manner.

[BootinUp]

14. Thats an interesting point

Sometimes it is forgotten.

[Zech Marquis]

4. Pat Bucahnan and a WP reporter said the same earlier on tv today

that "speech" will be the undoing of Dean--I know he meant to pump up his supporters, but...that was terrible! Now he has to deal with one Vietnam vet who has serious momentum in Kerry, Edwards the youthful, energetic son of a millworker, and NOW Clark, a decorated Vietnam vet and forme NATO Supreme comander just licking his chops. Kerry and Edwards will be enough of a battle, but add in Clark..well, and that "speech"...Dean's not done, but he is in serious trouble. That little rant he had will NOT help him at all here in the south--I want someone who can be President, not one of Vince McMahn's WWE wrestlers. What was he thnking?! :shrug:

[bearfartinthewoods]

8. clark will evaporate this week imho

[DaisyUCSB]

10. I don't think so, his people are very good

and he will make some waves from his idea of commentating on the state of the union

[bearfartinthewoods]

18. i don't think this is wise

it's blurring the lines between what he was and what he wants to be.

commentator or president.....that is the question.

[AP]

16. I hope not. He has important things to bring to the debate.

[Cocoa]

13. "the campaign was about the campaign"

I think he nailed it there, except I think it's been that way for a long time.

And I think that's why this loss hurts so bad. The question of whether this cammpaign will work got answered, "no."

And Trippi's excuse was very bad. Gep finished fourth, so how does he have so much power to hurt Dean?

[Redneck Socialist]

17. OK enough about the speech already.

The key line from the slate piece is this:

"'I think if we could blame on anyone, blame it on the 18- to 25-year-olds, because they were nonexistent,' he said."

Bringing new people into the process and turning out the youth vote is supposedly Dean's secret weapon. Speaking as a Dean supporter here, if he can't turn out his supporters he is going to lose the nomination.

We have a long way to go and Dean can certainly regain the momentum, but that quote is very telling.

[Adjoran]

19. Here's why Dean and Gephardt fared so badly

Usually Iowa IS about organization, and they were 1-2 in that, as everyone admitted.

BUT the close race and all the attention generated interest on its own. People went to caucuses on their own, forget the van rides and child care. The mild (for Iowa) weather made it easier on them.

The polls missed what was happening because they concentrated on "likely or definite" caucus-goers, and many people decided to go at the last weekend. They were screened out by the polls, which discount those who have never been before. And most of those late deciders broke for Kerry or Edwards.

Gephardt and Dean hurt each other with their negative ads back and forth, too.

Pundits were saying the polls underestimated Dean's support, because so many were 18-25 and don't have "land lines," using cells instead. What they forgot is that that age group is notoriously difficult to get out to the polls - and this wasn't a "drop by the precinct and cast your ballot," you had to commit the whole night to it.

[walkon]

20. Good article. Thanks for the post.

I agree with this writer's premise that Howard Dean is off message. I support Dean for his domestic agenda. That he was the first voice to question Bush's premise for war (first among Dem prez candidates) got my attention. But that is not all Dean is about. His Dem opponents are picking up the other issues Dean came with and scoring points. I fear that his "advisors" are feeding him wrongly about the reasons for his popularity, e.g. "anti-war". I do not think that Dean is anti-war. He is anti lying in order to go to war. Bush has not made his case, he has not met the test and we are not safer and cannot be safer with Bush in the WH.

As for the "speech": Never has so much been made of so little since the "Gore invented the internet" smear. I watched the Dean speech, the Kerry speech and the Edwards speech. Kerry bored me. Edwards kept my attention and is running on the better half of Dean's campaign issues. Dean was passionate and did not mention the "war" which would be good strategy for him in the next round.