I've been watching a lot of coverage since the caucuses, reading a lot at Daily Kos, and I feel dismayed. I really was genuinely excited about the challenge that Dean offered to the Democratic party, and the zeal with which people rose to his call. The whole embarrasment of Iowa is depressing for those of us who feel that the message that Dean forced us to come to grips with is the crucial one for America.
I have a great deal of respect for those who continue to support Dean even as his poll performance goes south. It is true that historically, a win in Iowa has not guaranteed a win at the nomination, and it is true that many candidates have come from behind.
However, all of us here know how powerful the media is, and how ruthless they can get once they get an idea into their head. Dean's "AARGH" has, lamentably, taken on a life of its own. In a pre-information age, it might not have been such a big deal: I'm sure Truman might have said "Aargh" once or twice. But in the age of 24-hour cable news? where a meme can bounce from CNN to the Daily Show to ESPN in one news cycle?
However, even if Dean doesn't win the nomination -- an eventuality about which I will abstain from speculating, having been wrong before -- it's important that we consider the secondary importance of figures like Dean. Being from Canada, we have this party here called the NDP, the New Democratic Party. (NO relation to Clintonian New Democrats!) They have long pushed social democratic policies, and have often looked ridiculous doing so. Their convention features a reliable contingent of nervous intellectuals, latter-day hippies and union diehards. However, their energy -- even if it has never led directly to power -- has at crucial points pushed the political direction of the country to the left. The centrist Liberals have stolen most of their best ideas -- universal health care, for example -- from the NDP.
What Dean and the Deaniacs represent in this campaign is more than a bid for the presidency. They put crucial pressure on a party that up until how has bought into the pathetic cult of "me-tooism", the sense that only a craven adherence to Bush's agenda (with a few progressive tweaks here and there, for good measure) will put them in office. In the wake of Dean, no one will be able to ignore what is at stake: whoever becomes the nominee will have to deal with Dean's army of motivated, young volunteers, and with the message of discontent that his candidacy has brought to the fore.
We might think of Dean not as McGovern, but as Goldwater. It only took one well-placed ad with a mushroom cloud to do in Goldwater's candidacy, just as Dean's "aargh" may or may not be the nail in his coffin. However, Goldwater's candidacy created a groundswell that wouldn't peak until much later, with Reagan's ascendency to power. The Deaniacs might be the first glimmer of a progressive groundswell in American life.