Saturday, January 24, 2004
The Rant Lives On (or does it?)
I've been dancing around which Campaign I work for since I started this blog. Partly because I know that the Deaniacs monitor current blog postings in the ether (consider them a sort of Not-So-Big Brother) and I didn't want to hit anyone's radar. But also because I wanted to sound somewhat impartial in my initial assessments of NH. I can't keep this up. Especially since I helped with a Dean rally Thursday in Lebanon and need to vent some of my impressions that I've been cooking up since then. Without wanting to sound too negative, the Campaign's certainly got bigger things to address than the largely unread opinions of a low-level lackey.
I'm looking backwards about 48 hours, which proves to be eons in the political cycles NH goes through these days. The Dean event I helped with on Thursday was hastily arranged. In a world where momentum is everything, such last minute rallies are only as good as the feeling on the street. The feeling on the Street in downtown Lebanon that day was, well, bland. All anyone was talking about then and largely still now is the infamous "I Have a Scream" speech in Iowa on Monday. Before the Rally got rolling, I went to Lou's Restaurant in Hanover to get a handle on what the locals at that legendary diner were talking about (Dean stopped by Lou's after I left and filmed his "Top 10 List" for Letterman therein). As expected, the locals and employees were talking about the Primary. The candidates all come through Lou's, a waitress nonchalantly told me. They try not to judge the race until they've seen them all. New Hampshirites are amazingly self-aware and poised when it comes to getting such questions.
After polishing off my Country Breakfast, I headed back to the office. We all got our assignments and descended upon the Opera House. The crowd trickled in. Eventually, the Opera House got to be about 3/4 filled, but that included about 50 volunteers and the traveling press corps which numbered 40 or so including some heavyweights like Howard Kurtz who usually doesn't travel with the Dean pool. Dean had a cold and sounded terribly hoarse as he delivered his stump speech for the umpteenth time to the faithful. The average age of the crowd seemed to be about 50, meaning I expect few young people skipped work to attend. As many as half of the people came down from Vermont. In other words, it wasn't anything like the fiery, filled-to-capacity crowds that often have followed Dean around the country. The rally began with a new video from the Campaign, shot at the Manchester headquarters a day earlier. Sadly, once again all it addressed was the claims that this campaign is a brand-new style of organizing. The Dean campaign really does feel like a dot com - all about the process of exciting new directions with a marvelous and clever business plan. Dot coms were awfully cool for a while and they entirely fired up a generation of young entrepeneurs. But when they failed, the hangover effect was debilitating for many. I can't help but imagine the cynical press corps looking at videos like this and saying, "yea, but..." As in, OK, you've got an extremely cool website, but there's gotta be more or these people, these hard-to-sway weathered New Hampshirites, just won't vote for you. I saw nothing in Thursday's rally to make me feel that anyone's gonna be swayed by such efforts.
Am I being harsh? I certainly hope not. Already today there's press filings about Friday events that were very well attended and the positive spin on things may be working. It's bitterly cold in New England, so much of the door-to-door canvassing expected this weekend will be cancelled. And there's still a sizable number of undecided voters identified in every poll I've seen all week. So this whole game still has a few more opportunities for all the players to make their last big plays. Politics, after all, is a contact sport. Nowhere is that more evident than in the up-close and personal world that is the New Hampshire Primary.
I've been dancing around which Campaign I work for since I started this blog. Partly because I know that the Deaniacs monitor current blog postings in the ether (consider them a sort of Not-So-Big Brother) and I didn't want to hit anyone's radar. But also because I wanted to sound somewhat impartial in my initial assessments of NH. I can't keep this up. Especially since I helped with a Dean rally Thursday in Lebanon and need to vent some of my impressions that I've been cooking up since then. Without wanting to sound too negative, the Campaign's certainly got bigger things to address than the largely unread opinions of a low-level lackey.
I'm looking backwards about 48 hours, which proves to be eons in the political cycles NH goes through these days. The Dean event I helped with on Thursday was hastily arranged. In a world where momentum is everything, such last minute rallies are only as good as the feeling on the street. The feeling on the Street in downtown Lebanon that day was, well, bland. All anyone was talking about then and largely still now is the infamous "I Have a Scream" speech in Iowa on Monday. Before the Rally got rolling, I went to Lou's Restaurant in Hanover to get a handle on what the locals at that legendary diner were talking about (Dean stopped by Lou's after I left and filmed his "Top 10 List" for Letterman therein). As expected, the locals and employees were talking about the Primary. The candidates all come through Lou's, a waitress nonchalantly told me. They try not to judge the race until they've seen them all. New Hampshirites are amazingly self-aware and poised when it comes to getting such questions.
After polishing off my Country Breakfast, I headed back to the office. We all got our assignments and descended upon the Opera House. The crowd trickled in. Eventually, the Opera House got to be about 3/4 filled, but that included about 50 volunteers and the traveling press corps which numbered 40 or so including some heavyweights like Howard Kurtz who usually doesn't travel with the Dean pool. Dean had a cold and sounded terribly hoarse as he delivered his stump speech for the umpteenth time to the faithful. The average age of the crowd seemed to be about 50, meaning I expect few young people skipped work to attend. As many as half of the people came down from Vermont. In other words, it wasn't anything like the fiery, filled-to-capacity crowds that often have followed Dean around the country. The rally began with a new video from the Campaign, shot at the Manchester headquarters a day earlier. Sadly, once again all it addressed was the claims that this campaign is a brand-new style of organizing. The Dean campaign really does feel like a dot com - all about the process of exciting new directions with a marvelous and clever business plan. Dot coms were awfully cool for a while and they entirely fired up a generation of young entrepeneurs. But when they failed, the hangover effect was debilitating for many. I can't help but imagine the cynical press corps looking at videos like this and saying, "yea, but..." As in, OK, you've got an extremely cool website, but there's gotta be more or these people, these hard-to-sway weathered New Hampshirites, just won't vote for you. I saw nothing in Thursday's rally to make me feel that anyone's gonna be swayed by such efforts.
Am I being harsh? I certainly hope not. Already today there's press filings about Friday events that were very well attended and the positive spin on things may be working. It's bitterly cold in New England, so much of the door-to-door canvassing expected this weekend will be cancelled. And there's still a sizable number of undecided voters identified in every poll I've seen all week. So this whole game still has a few more opportunities for all the players to make their last big plays. Politics, after all, is a contact sport. Nowhere is that more evident than in the up-close and personal world that is the New Hampshire Primary.
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