From
The Keen Meme Memo
1. The media missile attack
According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs Dean received a bucketfull of negative press:
Only 49 percent of all on-air evaluations of former Vermont governor in 2003 were positive while the rest of the democratic field collectively received 78 percent favorable coverage. Here is a sampling of manufactured scandals that hit the airways within three weeks of the Iowa caucuses. Exhibit:
a. A trooper working for the Vermont state government was found guilty of abusing his wife. Implication: Dean is somehow responsible.
b. Dean wrote a letter to Clinton urging him to intervene in Bosnia. Implication: Hypocrite! Aren't you supposed to be against all wars?
c. Dean did not appoint any minority cabinet members while governor of Vermont (a state that's 98% white). Accusation: He's a racist!
The problem is that Dean did not fight back for much too long, suggesting guilt to some voters. Both the timing and relentlessness of the negative coverate are suspect. These scandals have disappeared right after the Iowa loss, a testament to their baselessness.
2. Poor ad campaign
Dean's ads, in Iowa and elsewhere have been total floppers. It was obvious since at least June--when the first batch aired in Iowa--that standing lifeless in front of a tractor for 30 seconds, is not the greatest way to convey a message. No, not even if the tractor is a John Deere. Simply showing Dean in the middle of his passionate stump speech would have been a far better way to showcase the candidate. Ironically, while Dean is a powerhouse of passion in real life, his ads totally lacked dynamo.
3. Lame response to attacks
The Dean campaign's media operation was weak. Negative coverage can be contained with an able media strategy. Dean received the short end of the stick from every other major candidate during the debate. At the same time, the Kerry campaign was playing dirty behind the scenes, throwing every little piece of dirt it could dig up. Certainly Dean has his peccadillos--he's a politician after all--but, assymetrically, we did not get a chance to see other candidates' "warts" and that is partly Dean's fault. While we were hearing about Dean's "anger anger anger" we could have also heard, for example, about the time Kerry claimed he was Irish (which he is not) or the time he encouraged Vietnam War vets to throw away their medals, while he kept his.
4. Poorly managed internet-based voter turnout efforts
I embarked on a trip to Iowa the weekend before the "Perfect Storm" culmination, or anticlimax. It was a cold day, which became colder as I drove further north, but not as wet and miserable as Iowa can be in the autumn. Arriving in Des Moines I passed the Kerry headquarters, with its many placards and a conspicuously empty parking lot. The Edwards headquarters, not far away, also looked lonely. Across the street, the Dean campaign's lots were jammed with cars with a rainbow of colorful license plates: from Vermont to Washington, from Arizona to North Dakota, very possibly every state was represented. Few minutes into the building I met another fresh arrival, who flew in from California... and a college student from U Penn... In another lively time Jerry Rubin wrote "do not trust anyone under thirty"--here in the Des Moines Dean headquarters it was hard do find someone not trustworthy. To think that this was a national assembly of volunteers was exhilarating. No one had to be here, we all came because we wanted to. Our group received a run-down on the Iowa caucus process and was directed to Ames, to help with the canvassing effort. On our way to Ames we lost our way and ended up in a warehouse district looking for the AFSCME headquarters but finding nothing but warehouses and farmland. Our directions were flawed. Some kid back in Des Moines made a mistake on our directions. It was easy to dismiss this as a singular incident but based on my discussions with other Storm volunteers this was quite typical. Multiple groups of canvassers were sent into the same neighborhoods, volunteers working the phones were not trained. I do not say this to denigrate the dedicated and capable staff. Getting thousands of vollunteers to sign up to travel to a state via the internet and then directing them to effective GOTV activities is a complicated logistical task that has never been tried before.
These logistical problems will be solved in the future if not by Dean then by others to come. It is not enough to recruit thousands of supporters to travel to Iowa, you still need to know what to do with them when they arrive. Jerome Armstrong notes:
The task for the Dean troops in upcoming caucus states is to learn from the mistakes of Iowa. Prepare, concentrate more early on for 1's and 2's, train in persuasive tactics, and recruit establishment democratic officials for precinct captains.
The Kerry campaign identified precinct captains early, and they turned out to be its hidden strength. Precinct captains helped turn out the vote, while helping participants argue effectively during the caucuses. This is decidedly old school politics, studied by Sidney Blumenthal in his pre-Clinton days. But there is no reason why the new politics of the internet can not take the old modus operandi and improve it!