My faith is shaken. Process is very important to me, and the process broke down tonight in circumstances that should have been ideal for Dean campaign. There's no way around it.
I'm talking about all the promise of the Dean campaign. New voters. An energized electorate. Rebuilding the party.
None of that materialized tonight in Iowa. Granted, it's just Iowa. But Dean didn't just lose tonight - he didn't even compete.
Maybe I was overoptimistic. Maybe Dean's chances are as good as ever and I was being unrealistic, but tonight has hit me hard.
It's not difficult to see rationally how things might turn around, but at this point I find I'm left to hope. And as the old saying goes, hope is not a plan.
It's conceivable that NH voters will make a stand for Dean out of defiance to Iowa, or something like that. It seems likely that Dean's broad support in upcoming states gives him a huge advantage regardless of tonight's results. It's possible that Kerry and Edwards put too much of their available resources into Iowa, and will be unable to fight so hard in NH and beyond. We'll see, but two weeks ago I'd have said the same for Iowa.
Just to be clear, I'm NOT anywhere near jumping off of the Dean wagon. I believed yesterday that he was the best candidate by a long shot, and I'll believe it tomorrow.
But there's no denying that tonight is a huge setback, and very possibly it's a harbinger of things to come. When it came time to count the votes, they just weren't there. They'd been scared of by a deafening chorus of self-interested "unelectable!"
On to hopefully greener pastures in NH, although the cloud on the eastern horizon is ominous indeed.