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  •  well it wasn't *all* routine (none / 1)

    not to me anyway. But the money has really been the oddest and most troubling part of the Dean rise and fall, less in and of itself, and more because it kind of undermines Dean's pitch of being "good with money".

    On the other hand, I'm not really sure what people were expecting. That Dean was running on internet ether and meetups alone? That all his supporters would be disappointed that he wasn't? He was running for the dem nomination, not as a 3rd or 4th or 5th party. Of course a lot of what he did was going to be the way everyone else did it. But not all. It's possible to keep both of those thoughts in your head at the same time.

    Barack Obama will only become president if enough people pay attention, so pay attention, dammit!

    by JMS on Wed Feb 25, 2004 at 06:40:24 PM PDT

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    •  No, of course not. (none / 1)

      And naturally, I give Dean plenty of credit for the things he's done in jump-starting this campaign.

      But if you had to pick one issue of campaign mechanics on which Dean might have taken a little more care, might it not have been... the money?

      We all know the virtues of having raised his money from small operators -- and if we didn't, we've now certainly been well drilled in them. But how about a little more attention to the virtues of spending money on small operators? To be precise: paying them first.

      It's a spin, to be sure. But it's a little too easy to make. Small money in the front door, big money out the back. You're practically forced to ask, given the fact that such a big deal was made of Joe Trippi taking no salary (as such), why the firm of Trippi/McMahon couldn't have been asked to wait another 30 days on some of that $400K? I mean, maybe T/M needed that money on account of Trippi's zealous personal chivalry. Or maybe that chivalry was easier to sell back on the farm because the firm's money was a hard lock.

      I don't know. Just asking.

      Can I imagine a scenario in which a perfectly honest person would be forced to pay the big boys first while the little guys twisted in the wind for a while? Sure. It happens every day, in every business.

      But that's the point. It wasn't supposed to be like that. Or at least, not when the curtain was open.

      by Kagro X on Wed Feb 25, 2004 at 07:16:50 PM PDT

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