Those of us who support Clark's candidacy see someone with enormous upside. We see someone who may be the only candidate who could really challenge Bush in key swing states across the South and Midwest. Apparently others have seen that potential too i.e., the unions that just endorsed Dean. But the unions instead chose to endorse Dean. One of the reasons given was Dean's extraordinary organization and Clark's organizational problems.
I see lots of little snippets from places around the campaign. The stories began almost immediately with the split among the draft Clark movement and then the departure of Donnie Fowler. So. Just how bad is the Clark campaign organization?
Let's first consider the positives. The Clark website is really starting to take shape, the General is raising gobs of money, the campaign has opened offices in key states and now seems focused on a strategy of competing hard in New Hampshire and then following a Southern strategy. The Clark campaign has been doing a good job of staying disciplined in terms of message and has been keeping their candidate visible in the media.
But, now the negatives. The biggest negative is that there seem to be people all over the country who want to help but need some way to connect to Little Rock. It appears that there are decision-making bottlenecks in Little Rock that are preventing volunteers and perhaps donors from contributing time and money across the country. I have personal experience with these problems from trying to schedule appearances to getting organized for fundraisers to finding meetup locations that work.
It seems to me looking in from the outside that the biggest problem is failure to properly delegate and to integrate. This is what the Dean campaign makes look easy but something that is evidently really hard for more normal campaign types.
I don't think anyone can expect Clark to immediately develop the kind of integrated grassroots campaign that Dean has been working on for almost a year. I also don't think that voters or interest groups should put too much emphasis on the necessity of having that organization now. However, I do think that for Clark to be successful the campaign infrastructure is going to have to show a steeper positive gradient soon.