Friday, January 30, 2004
The Inevitable Post-Mortems Continue
The dissection of the corpse that was the Dean Campaign has begun in earnest. Everywhere I look over the last few days, the news is terrible. The Campaign (reportedly) has $3M in cash on hand, about that much in debts. Trippi's an emotional mess (the just-published GQ profile is the best example of his Icarus-like flight - it's volumunious, but you should read it here Link). Not only Kerry but Edwards and Clark are trouncing Dean in every single poll from the states voting next Tuesday (I'm not rubbing salt in the wound - the numbers I've seen this afternoon come directly from the campaign's Media folk). If you're one of the legions of people that spend time "trolling the blog" as the kids say (Link) you've probably got a very different view of what Dean's heavy-in-denial supporters are saying. But that's crap. Case in point - HQ is trying to enlist volunteers to travel to NH this weekend to pack up the regional offices so that the campaign doesn't get charged for February rent. Everyone in the know knows it's kaput. It's all over except for the concession speech.
Speaking of the blog (and for those of you that are confused, it's a general reference to the postings put up by people that represent the equivalent of an instantaneous electronic bulletin board of suggestions/rants/mindlessness), I'm a total convert on the importance of it with regard to American politics. I remember distinctly having a discussion with my older brother in Wisconsin over the holidays about how I thought it "could" change the way people talk about politics. Being older, probably wiser in terms of technical utility (he's an IT project manager with many years of real experience), and decidedly more cynical, he laughed off my claims as wishful thinking. He was right. I'd drunk the Kool Aid, and even though I didn't yet understand it, I sounded like a dot com pitch. The amazing thing about the whole Dean collapse is just how old-fashioned the entire process has remained even through the constant barrage of bunk spun by the Deaniacs and sympathetic journalists and pundits that also sipped from propagandistic nectar handed out for months on end. American voters in the traditional battle grounds don't want to be told that they need to change the way they choose candidates. Retirees from Iowa and New Hampshire surely don't want to be called by 20-year-old AWOL waiters from Santa Cruz telling them to come to a rally to take back the power - they already have the power, in their opinions, and they resent the implication that they've not used it properly in elections past. With each passing day, I'm more and more convinced that the Dean movement simply won't translate to national politics until, and unless, a massive wave of attrition thins out the population of most people currently running the country. I'm not calling for that wave of death or even saying that I'm happy to make that judgment, but I am certainly willing to admit when I'm wrong.
To take my mind of politics for a few hours, I'm headed out to catch a truly escapist movie. "Bubba Ho Tep" - the story of Elvis and JFK (who did not die when we were led to believe) rising from their shared retirement home to combat an ancient evil zombie. Seriously. Just like the Dean campaign's epic demise, you just can't make this stuff up.
The dissection of the corpse that was the Dean Campaign has begun in earnest. Everywhere I look over the last few days, the news is terrible. The Campaign (reportedly) has $3M in cash on hand, about that much in debts. Trippi's an emotional mess (the just-published GQ profile is the best example of his Icarus-like flight - it's volumunious, but you should read it here Link). Not only Kerry but Edwards and Clark are trouncing Dean in every single poll from the states voting next Tuesday (I'm not rubbing salt in the wound - the numbers I've seen this afternoon come directly from the campaign's Media folk). If you're one of the legions of people that spend time "trolling the blog" as the kids say (Link) you've probably got a very different view of what Dean's heavy-in-denial supporters are saying. But that's crap. Case in point - HQ is trying to enlist volunteers to travel to NH this weekend to pack up the regional offices so that the campaign doesn't get charged for February rent. Everyone in the know knows it's kaput. It's all over except for the concession speech.
Speaking of the blog (and for those of you that are confused, it's a general reference to the postings put up by people that represent the equivalent of an instantaneous electronic bulletin board of suggestions/rants/mindlessness), I'm a total convert on the importance of it with regard to American politics. I remember distinctly having a discussion with my older brother in Wisconsin over the holidays about how I thought it "could" change the way people talk about politics. Being older, probably wiser in terms of technical utility (he's an IT project manager with many years of real experience), and decidedly more cynical, he laughed off my claims as wishful thinking. He was right. I'd drunk the Kool Aid, and even though I didn't yet understand it, I sounded like a dot com pitch. The amazing thing about the whole Dean collapse is just how old-fashioned the entire process has remained even through the constant barrage of bunk spun by the Deaniacs and sympathetic journalists and pundits that also sipped from propagandistic nectar handed out for months on end. American voters in the traditional battle grounds don't want to be told that they need to change the way they choose candidates. Retirees from Iowa and New Hampshire surely don't want to be called by 20-year-old AWOL waiters from Santa Cruz telling them to come to a rally to take back the power - they already have the power, in their opinions, and they resent the implication that they've not used it properly in elections past. With each passing day, I'm more and more convinced that the Dean movement simply won't translate to national politics until, and unless, a massive wave of attrition thins out the population of most people currently running the country. I'm not calling for that wave of death or even saying that I'm happy to make that judgment, but I am certainly willing to admit when I'm wrong.
To take my mind of politics for a few hours, I'm headed out to catch a truly escapist movie. "Bubba Ho Tep" - the story of Elvis and JFK (who did not die when we were led to believe) rising from their shared retirement home to combat an ancient evil zombie. Seriously. Just like the Dean campaign's epic demise, you just can't make this stuff up.
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