Dean in U.S. News

[Guest Wildbomb 4:20]

Considering the amount of negativity that seems to surround Dean, and how he will "lose" the election, I figured I'd put this up.

 

"Is He the One?" by Roger Simon

This week's U.S. News.

 

In the beginning, Howard Dean had no intention of winning the Democratic nomination. In the beginning, he was resigned to being a lower-tier candidate, who would pipe up at the debates and be ignored in between them.

 

In the beginning, Howard Dean intended to be one of those semitiresome aspirants who enter a presidential race in a semiserious attempt to force the media to consider his pet issues. And his pet issues happened to be healthcare and early childhood development.

 

In other words, in the beginning, Howard Dean never intended to be more than a bore.

 

"There is no doubt in my mind that his motivation to run for president was to raise those two issues to the highest level of debate," Joe Trippi, his campaign manager, says. "Pre-Iraq war, that is all he ever talked about. He's a smart guy, but he was under no illusions that he was going to be the nominee of the party."

 

Which gave Dean the freedom to fail. He could do whatever he wanted to do and behave in any manner he wanted. Dean was free to be Dean. And, at first, those who didn't know him were shocked. His attacks on George W. Bush were far harsher than conventional politicking dictated. As were his attacks on the "Washington Democrats" who were running against him for the nomination. Dean gave every appearance of being a candidate who didn't care whom he messed with and whom he ticked off. Which he didn't.

 

" `Hey, I'm not going to win anyway.' That is how he felt," Trippi says. Dean is a logical man, and not winning was a logical assumption for him to make. As of January 31 last year, the Dean campaign had a staff of seven people, $157,000 in the bank, and 432 supporters. Today, less than a year later, the staff numbers 400, the campaign has raised $41 million, and it has 560,000 registered supporters.

 

The Iraq war changed everything. To a degree few guessed, rank-and-file Democrats, as well as people new to the political process, were against the war, and Dean became their rallying point. But those in the Dean campaign who were political veterans knew mere opposition to the war coupled with a few pet issues would not be enough. Dean, they argued, would have to transform himself from a conventional politician to an inspirational force.

 

And in a 10-page, single-spaced confidential memo written by Trippi and other staffers to Dean on June 11 last year, shortly before his formal announcement, Dean was urged not to be just another typical candidate "who has a healthcare plan" but to become a "transformational leader that rises to the historical moment and leads a movement to save and restore America's ideals."

 

The memo says: "This is not about issues. It is about values. This is not about differences in healthcare plans, tax cuts, or Social Security. It's about a fight for our values and our country, who owns it and who runs it . . . . This is not Sgt. Pepper's Magical Mystery Tour. This is Howard Dean's Magical History Tour of the Greatest Nation on this Earth. And a call to reclaim what we have lost."

 

The memo, obtained by U.S. News, was supposed to crystallize some of the discussions Dean already had with the staff and outline a blueprint for the future of the campaign. It contains several warnings. "You are by definition the classic outsider," the memo says. "But think about the fear and anger you have engendered from the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist think tank], the other candidates, and many in the Washington establishment. They are not afraid you are George McGovern or Jerry Brown. No, what they are afraid of is that you are Jimmy Carter."

 

In other words, the memo was telling Dean he could be a winner. Written at a time when Dean was at single digits in the polls, it was outrageously, even hilariously, optimistic. And even those who wrote it probably would not have guessed that seven months later, the hottest political story would be who is running second to Dean in the national polls or whether Dean can hold on to his lead in Iowa as caucus day looms January 19. (The endorsement by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin on Friday was a big boost for Dean, after a week of negative media stories.) And nobody could have guessed that someday Dean would be mulling over how he will choose a running mate. "Geography matters," he says. "Electoral votes matter. And if they are running now, how they were able to attract votes."

 

Balance. So go through the list: Geography would eliminate fellow New Englanders Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, both of whom are running for the Democratic nomination now. Would Dick Gephardt of Missouri balance the ticket? Well, maybe. But his selection might depend on Dean's third condition: how many votes he attracts in the primaries. And Dean is working hard to eliminate Gephardt in Iowa. Also, the bad blood between Gephardt and Dean seems real. In July, Dean told U.S. News, "I worked for Dick Gephardt [in 1988]. I love Dick Gephardt. He's one of the most decent people I know. And he's one of the best." But that was before Gephardt began attacking Dean both on issues and on character. Asked recently if he wanted to change his mind about Gephardt, Dean replied, "Yeah." Then in a tone more sorrowful than angry, he said, "I'm surprised at the bitterness of the attacks, I really am. I don't think they're going to succeed, but I'm surprised at it." So whom does that leave? Sen. Bob Graham of Florida would give Dean balanced geography and electoral votes. Wesley Clark (who says he doesn't want the job) would satisfy Dean's geography requirement, and Clark may very well show impressive vote-getting ability in the primaries. (Clark believes they will be so impressive that he will beat Dean and become the nominee himself.) Ditto Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. But there are others, not running for president, whom Dean could turn to if he manages to win, including a choice that would be nothing less than explosive: Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

 

There is one problem with this, however. In speech after speech, at stop after stop, Dean berates those "Washington politicians" who voted for the war in Iraq. He says they either lacked judgment or courage or both. And Senator Clinton voted for the Iraq war. So U.S. News asked Dean if a vote for the war would disqualify a person from becoming his running mate. "No," Dean replied instantly. "Absolutely not."

 

Crank the base. Though Dean did not enter the race with the expectations of winning, he did see a way to win. "Karl Rove [President Bush's political guru] discovered it, too, but I discovered it independently," Dean says and adds that the theory is embodied in the writings of George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley. "What you do is crank the heck out of your base, get them really excited and crank up the base turnout and you'll win the middle-of-the-roaders," Dean says. The reason, according to the theory, is that swing voters share the characteristics of both parties and eventually go with whatever party excites them the most. "Democrats appeal to them on their softer side--the safety net--but the Republicans appeal to them on the harder side--the discipline, the responsibility, and so forth," Dean says. "So the question is which side appears to be energetic, deeply believing in its message, deeply committed to bringing a vision of hope to America. That side is the side that gets the swing voters and wins."

 

This theory dictated a freewheeling, slash-and-burn campaign style in order to "crank the heck" out of the Democratic base, while also incorporating the Trippi memo urgings that Dean take "this campaign to a higher ground." Which is why Dean's stump speech today is a combination of the two. "I concluded that the only way we can win," Dean says, "is to really get our base excited: African-Americans, Latinos, trade unionists, women, and now young people." In other words, those Democrats who believed in heading for the center--by voting to support the war in Iraq, for instance--were missing the point entirely. If you excited the base, the center would follow. If you headed for the center, you would never get the center, because you would appear wishy-washy and weak. Excite the base; that would be the key to the entire Dean campaign. And opposition to the war, even today, continues to excite the base. No matter what state he is in, when Dean says, "As you know, I was against the war in Iraq," he can barely get the words out of his mouth before the applause begins. It doesn't matter if he is in Iowa or New Hampshire or Michigan or South Carolina. If the Dean candidacy has proved anything, it has proved that the Democratic Party is a party against the Iraq war. But the war will not be enough. For starters, one of Dean's biggest fears is that just before November this year, Bush will pull out of Iraq in order to win the election.

 

"The president has shown, repeatedly, that when policy and politics clash, he always takes the expedient political view," Dean told U.S. News. "He may pull out for political reasons. If we do, I think Iraq over time will dissolve into chaos. Now that we're there, we need to stay the course. But I would prefer to stay the course with foreign troops. This president is incapable of doing that because he has undermined the confidence of the rest of the world and America as a moral leader."

 

 

While Dean says he does not underestimate the difficulty that any Democratic nominee will face against a sitting president, he believes he matches up well against Bush, especially when it comes to the swing voters. "I get credit for wanting a balanced budget; the Republicans don't get that," he says. "I get fiscal responsibility. I also get the health insurance piece, the struggling middle class, the struggling working class. I talk about the South all the time, because people wonder how the Democrats are going to win the South. The way you win in the South is to say, look, the Republicans want to divide us, I want to keep us together. When you lose your job and it goes overseas, that affects white people and black people both."

 

While Dean claims black support, his audiences, even in black neighborhoods and black cities, remain largely white. Asked whether he really connects with black audiences, Dean says, "Yes, I do, very much so. Especially in the African-American churches I go to. But the African-American community is going to be careful. They've been burned before by Democrats. I think if you're an outsider, meaning you're white and you come into the African-American community, African-Americans have an attitude that says, `Well, show me.' In fact, I'll tell you one thing, the African-American electorate has changed a lot in this country in the years since Jesse Jackson ran. Because today they say `show me' to the black politicians as well."

 

The Trippi memo urged Dean to emphasize "the conscious empowerment of the American people as patriots for change." And today Dean tells audiences, "You've got the power!" Dean believes his campaign has been successful so far because it empowered Democrats who felt that their party leaders were weak and even craven in the face of George W. Bush's victory in 2000. "Bush gets 500,000 votes short of Al Gore, and our guys treated him like he had a 500 million-vote surplus!" Dean says. "We just caved in and died in front of the guy because he had a 70 percent popularity rating! The Democrats in Congress were afraid of him. They voted for the war. The tax cuts. No Child Left Behind [education reform law]." And the line that gets people to their feet during his speeches starts with a denunciation of his fellow Democrats who voted for the war--"They all voted for the war in Iraq because they were afraid of being called soft on defense!"--and concludes with, "The way to beat George Bush is to stand up and say who you are and be proud of being Democrats and let's go get him!"

 

Dean has come so far so fast that he is already planning what he will do in his second term. When, in a recent debate in Iowa, he said in utmost seriousness that he would balance the budget "in the sixth or seventh year of my administration," the audience erupted in laughter. Dean was confused by that reaction. What was so funny? Doesn't everybody know he intends to win not just in 2004 but in 2008? In fact, Dean envisions not only his own successful election this year but also the election of friendly members of Congress, who will help pass his legislative agenda. When people ask Dean how he will work with a Republican Congress, Dean tells them that he intends to help elect a Democratic one. Toward that end, his campaign intends to target 20 to 25 close races around the country and raise money for the Democrats in those races. Opponents call this audacious overreaching, but U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, says it is one of the reasons he endorsed Dean. "He's one of the few candidates who talks not only about winning the presidency but about winning the House," Menendez says. "My colleagues will be very interested in a presidential candidate who thinks about more than himself."

 

Dean's recent endorsement by former New Jersey senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley, taken with the previous endorsement by Al Gore, helped send the signal that there is really no major wing of the Democratic Party ideologically opposed to Howard Dean. The sole issue that remains is his electability, for which the Dean camp has a ready answer. "If these guys can't beat us, how the hell are they going to beat George Bush, Karl Rove, and $200 million?" Trippi asks. A fair question. But how is Dean going to beat George Bush, Karl Rove, and $200 million? First, Dean says he is the only candidate who can bring significant numbers of new voters to the process and also attract people who have stopped voting. "We're going to get 3 or 4 million voters who have never voted before, and they are not going to vote for George Bush," he says. "They are going to vote for a Democratic president, Senate, and House." But even though Dean's $41 million is a Democratic fundraising record, it is less than half of what Bush raised last year. Yet Dean has an answer for that, too. "I think in the long run we are the only candidate that can raise the kind of money that's going to be competitive with George Bush," he says. "I'm not kidding around when I talk about getting 2 million people to give us $100 each. Maybe we'll only get a million people giving us $100 and maybe we'll go to the traditional sources for another $50 million, but I think we can compete. And I don't think anybody else can."

 

The conventional wisdom that began the campaign last year was, well, conventional. Gephardt would win Iowa, Kerry would win New Hampshire, and Edwards would win South Carolina. The fear was that the party would be fractured and the campaign a long and grueling one. Howard Dean? Oh, yeah, angry guy, shouts a lot, antiwar. Forget it. Today, the rest of the field is scrapping for second- and third-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and hoping to catch fire in the seven states that hold their primaries on February 3.

 

Comfort level. The exception is Dick Gephardt, who must win Iowa. Sitting in a van that was carefully poking through a blizzard recently to the small town of Dallas Center, Iowa, Gephardt told U.S. News: "I think I have a better chance to defeat George Bush in the states where we have to defeat him--in the Midwest, in the border states where we've got to win the electoral votes to win this election. And you know, it's not anything you can prove to anybody, but I've often had people out on the stump say, `You're a nice man, I like you, you're likable, you've got a nice family, you're . . . you know, you're the kind of person that I can see as president,' and I think that's . . . in the end for a lot of voters, it's who do you like, who do you trust. And it doesn't have so much to do with issues as it has to do with--am I comfortable with this person? Do I want to give him this responsibility? Do I trust him to make the right decisions? I think I can beat George Bush on that score and the others."

 

But Gephardt can also see certain handwriting on the wall. "If he were to win Iowa and New Hampshire," Gephardt said recently of Dean, "he'd pretty well be the nominee."

 

While Dean believes he can survive a second-place finish to Gephardt in Iowa, it is dubious that Gephardt can survive second place to Dean. According to the latest Dean campaign polls, Dean leads in Iowa (with Kerry in second and Gephardt in third), Dean leads in New Hampshire (with Clark in second, narrowly ahead of Kerry), and Dean leads in South Carolina (with Edwards in second). Dean, according to his latest polls, also leads in Arizona.

 

Polls are even more meaningless than usual in Iowa, however, where people must vote in a bizarre fashion: It's not like a primary when you can go any- time throughout the day, cast your ballot, and go home. In Iowa, everyone must show up at the same time--6:30 p.m.--and publicly declare whom they want (that's right, there is no secret ballot) in a process that can easily take three hours or more. It is always dark out, the weather is often bad, and some people have to drive long distances to vote. Only the highly motivated vote. It is designed that way. It is a contest for party activists. While Gephardt has older voters who are experienced in voting in caucuses, bad weather might keep them home. Dean has a young army and a lot of enthusiasm, but it is unproven. (Since according to Iowa law, you need only be 18 on Election Day in November to vote, 17-year-olds can vote in the caucuses, and Dean's campaign is scouring high schools for these young voters.)

 

While the media are concentrating as far down the road as February 3 and some are even looking to Michigan on February 7, the Dean campaign's main "choke" point, the point at which things could turn bad, is February 10, when Virginia and Tennessee vote. On the face of it, neither seems a Dean-leaning state, and should Wesley Clark actually surge to the forefront as Dean's main rival, both states could be good for Clark. Mitigating that, however, are two factors: Virginia has been one of the strongest states for Dean in terms of volunteers, following only California and New York. And Gore is expected to help Dean in Tennessee. True, Gore didn't carry his home state in 2000 (if he had, he would be president today), but that was a general election. Among Democrats in a primary, Gore could be expected to be a more popular figure.

 

In his memo, Trippi told Dean that this was a pivotal moment in American history and that "like it or not, fate picked you" to step forward.

 

"We are not going to promise the American people a paradise," the memo says. "Instead they are going to hear a summons to do their duty."

[bobobrazil1984 0]

Interesting. I'd really like to get my hands (or my eyes via computer) on the Trippi memo.

[Guest Wildbomb 4:20]

If I'm not mistaken, the memo can be found on the U.S. News webpage.

 

I'm actually quite surprised by the lack of reaction to this; I'd figure it'd be dissected to bits by now.