The Keen Meme Memo

1. The media missile attack

According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs Dean received a bucketfull of negative press:
Only 49 percent of all on-air evaluations of former Vermont governor in 2003 were positive while the rest of the democratic field collectively received 78 percent favorable coverage. Here is a sampling of manufactured scandals that hit the airways within three weeks of the Iowa caucuses. Exhibit:

a. A trooper working for the Vermont state government was found guilty of abusing his wife. Implication: Dean is somehow responsible.

b. Dean wrote a letter to Clinton urging him to intervene in Bosnia. Implication: Hypocrite! Aren't you supposed to be against all wars?

c. Dean did not appoint any minority cabinet members while governor of Vermont (a state that's 98% white). Accusation: He's a racist!

The problem is that Dean did not fight back for much too long, suggesting guilt to some voters. Both the timing and relentlessness of the negative coverate are suspect. These scandals have disappeared right after the Iowa loss, a testament to their baselessness.

2. Poor ad campaign

Dean's ads, in Iowa and elsewhere have been total floppers. It was obvious since at least June--when the first batch aired in Iowa--that standing lifeless in front of a tractor for 30 seconds, is not the greatest way to convey a message. No, not even if the tractor is a John Deere. Simply showing Dean in the middle of his passionate stump speech would have been a far better way to showcase the candidate. Ironically, while Dean is a powerhouse of passion in real life, his ads totally lacked dynamo.

3. Lame response to attacks

The Dean campaign's media operation was weak. Negative coverage can be contained with an able media strategy. Dean received the short end of the stick from every other major candidate during the debate. At the same time, the Kerry campaign was playing dirty behind the scenes, throwing every little piece of dirt it could dig up. Certainly Dean has his peccadillos--he's a politician after all--but, assymetrically, we did not get a chance to see other candidates' "warts" and that is partly Dean's fault. While we were hearing about Dean's "anger anger anger" we could have also heard, for example, about the time Kerry claimed he was Irish (which he is not) or the time he encouraged Vietnam War vets to throw away their medals, while he kept his.

4. Poorly managed internet-based voter turnout efforts

I embarked on a trip to Iowa the weekend before the "Perfect Storm" culmination, or anticlimax. It was a cold day, which became colder as I drove further north, but not as wet and miserable as Iowa can be in the autumn. Arriving in Des Moines I passed the Kerry headquarters, with its many placards and a conspicuously empty parking lot. The Edwards headquarters, not far away, also looked lonely. Across the street, the Dean campaign's lots were jammed with cars with a rainbow of colorful license plates: from Vermont to Washington, from Arizona to North Dakota, very possibly every state was represented. Few minutes into the building I met another fresh arrival, who flew in from California... and a college student from U Penn... In another lively time Jerry Rubin wrote "do not trust anyone under thirty"--here in the Des Moines Dean headquarters it was hard do find someone not trustworthy. To think that this was a national assembly of volunteers was exhilarating. No one had to be here, we all came because we wanted to. Our group received a run-down on the Iowa caucus process and was directed to Ames, to help with the canvassing effort. On our way to Ames we lost our way and ended up in a warehouse district looking for the AFSCME headquarters but finding nothing but warehouses and farmland. Our directions were flawed. Some kid back in Des Moines made a mistake on our directions. It was easy to dismiss this as a singular incident but based on my discussions with other Storm volunteers this was quite typical. Multiple groups of canvassers were sent into the same neighborhoods, volunteers working the phones were not trained. I do not say this to denigrate the dedicated and capable staff. Getting thousands of vollunteers to sign up to travel to a state via the internet and then directing them to effective GOTV activities is a complicated logistical task that has never been tried before.

These logistical problems will be solved in the future if not by Dean then by others to come. It is not enough to recruit thousands of supporters to travel to Iowa, you still need to know what to do with them when they arrive. Jerome Armstrong notes:

The task for the Dean troops in upcoming caucus states is to learn from the mistakes of Iowa. Prepare, concentrate more early on for 1's and 2's, train in persuasive tactics, and recruit establishment democratic officials for precinct captains.

The Kerry campaign identified precinct captains early, and they turned out to be its hidden strength. Precinct captains helped turn out the vote, while helping participants argue effectively during the caucuses. This is decidedly old school politics, studied by Sidney Blumenthal in his pre-Clinton days. But there is no reason why the new politics of the internet can not take the old modus operandi and improve it!

Just one month ago this diary post on Kos documented Dean's stellar rise and it seemed the star would never wane. Now at the grassroots the mood inside the Dean campaign ranges between the brooding and the apocalyptic. I feel like a Rennesian after the fall of Paris. Angry? You betcha. The most optimistic statement I heard all day is that after all this is over Dean will become a political commentator. This morning I heard Dean being interviewed by NPR's Corey Clintoff. Clintoff asked, Governor you came in third in Iowa last week and now you came in second in New Hampshire, you seem to be moving up. Dean's reply was not "Yes we are" or "Yeah!" but a meek and fleeting "Maybe so"...

I will be writing a longer piece later on what happened, why and what it all means.

An amazing diary piece appeared on the Daily Kos' front page yesterday, written by one Sterling Newberry. A Washington resident, Newberry disects the beltway mentality with the precision of a surgeon and makes several unique points. He observes that the beltway Republicans view themselves as extremely vulnerable:

The economy is what they worry about, and again, the recognition is that the books are cooked. The worry is not that Democrats will use it - because the feeling here is that Kerry's stumble on the tax question is typical - but that there will be a revolt on the conservative flank.

Yet the prospects for Democrats are not bright either:

If you look at this election the old way, we don't stand a a chance. There are only 33 congressional districts in play, and more of them, thanks to Texas Redistricting, are Democrats. The institutional pressure to put forward a "safe" nominee who will not scare away swing voters gives us a candidate who cannot attack much of the worst of the last four years, because he voted for it.

There is a real argument here for a new politics and it is an argument that you will not catch on mainstream airwaves. The way to win this election does not pass through forests of hedging and equivocating. If the Democratic Party has not lost its instinct of self-preservation it can not afford not to hit the Achilles heel of policies of the past three and a half years. There is a real political cost to giving the nomination of an insider like Kerry or Edwards because they are inextricably complicit in much of the bad policymaking.

Somehow this fact escapes the debate over the the comparative electability of the candidates. In its present usage "electability" is a term that pertains to the degree of affiliation with the beltway. It is not the case that an outsider like Dean or Clark could not be elected. Not sullied by affiliation with recent policy flops like No Child Left Behind, both would have the advantage of having their hands free to tackle the current administration. The only problem is that for the insiders the re-equilibrium in the Democratic Party's internal power balance that would follow the nomination of a Clark or a Dean is unimaginable. "Is he electable?"--ask the insiders; they really mean: "Is he one of us?"

Of all the words spoken in his interview with Diane Sawyer there is only one phrase that CNN likes so much it keeps posting it as a descriptor of the interview... that phrase is "I have all kinds of warts".

It is 7:24 PM Central Time and the Iowa caucuses are well under way. The late Edwards-Kucinich alliance is inexplicable. Why would Kucinich want to allign himself with a candidate who voted for the Iraq war resolution which Kucinich so strongly opposes. One of the assumptions incorporated into my earlier caucus prediciton is that Kucinich voters will tend to vote for Dean. This is now less likely.

"Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually." --Dick Cheney in an interview to the LA Times.

I hope that hole near Tikrit still vacant so that Cheney can move into a more work-conducive environment.

Last week, a Dean organizer involved with the Boone County canvassing effort mentioned that their local canvassing office recieved a "commit card"--a written promise by a supporter to attend the caucus--from 5% of the county's Democratic roster. By his words a 1.5% commit rate is considered good, while 3% is truly excellent. There is, however, plenty of room for skepticism: part of the Des Moines metropolitain area, Boone County is about five miles from Ames, home of Iowa State University. College organizers energized by the Dean campaign are certainly doing marvels, but how far from the university centers their efforts will spread is a question that will have to wait until 6:30pm CT to be answered.

My sources in Iowa tell me that the number of Dean supporters who have confirmed with the campaign they will attend the caucus, the "hard count"--is 55,000. If this is true, that means we are hours away from another surprise, another "Dean awakening" a la the release of 2nd quarter fundraising numbers by the Dean campaign back in May, only this time the results will be more tangible. I suspect, however, that this is an optimistic estimate and that the actual turnout will be lower. But even assuming a 25% no-show rate and a larger than average turnout of 130,000 that would give Dean 32% of total support in the first round of voting.

In anticipation of the Iowa caucus I decided to do several back-of-the-envelope estimations of the final outcome. The model is based on the average of the most recent Zogby, Des Moines Register and Survey USA polls. It incorporates adjustments for organizational strength, recent trend path, 2nd choice preferences posted on Kos and the likely preferences of voters supporting Clark, Lieberman, Kucinich and others. With so many factors to consider the estimation is somewhat arbitrary, but then again, what else do I have besides creative conjecture.

Prediction

Dean: 29%
Kerry: 26%
Gephardt: 24%
Edwards: 21%

If Kerry wins in Iowa, he will be best positiond to become the "anti-Dean" candidate for the remainder of the nomination contest. If Gephardt ups Kerry, the "anti-Dean" mantle is more likely to be worn by Clark, who has chosen to have his decisive battle in New Hampshire. Expect a bitter fight between Kerry and Clark for 2nd place in NH, as Dean hovers above the fray. Gephardt, despite his organizational advantages is very unlikely to get past Iowa; he needs to come in 1st, but the line ahead of him is getting longer.