Regular diary watchers are familiar with the dirty tricks being pulled against the Dean campaign: computerized phone calls, calls at odd hours, calls laced with obscenities, and the like.
Dean is blowing a huge opportunity in New Hampshire by not replying to these more forcefully.
Read on...
Suppose that you got a phone call at 4AM from someone claiming to be from the Dean campaign. You'd get mighty pissed at them and switch your support to some other candidate, right?
What if you later found out that the phone call couldn't have come from the Dean camp, but came from somewhere else? Who would you suspect made the calls? Would you support Dean out of sympathy?
This is exactly the opportunity that Dean's opponents have given to the Dean campaign. Dean could buy TV and radio ads and issue a press release stating that these phone calls -- the computerized ones that come three times a day, the ones at four in the morning, the ones laced with obscenities -- couldn't have possibly come from his campaign because of the rules they follow. The voter backlash could sail him to victory in New Hampshire.
So what I'm wondering is, why hasn't he done this? Frankly, the fact that he hasn't done this is showing me that his campaign isn't very quick on its feet.