As some of you might be aware, I am, or perhaps was, a member of the Dean campaign staff in New Hampshire. I haven't been around much since the 27th, mainly because I needed some time off after 4 months of working nearly nonstop, and because I had a vested interest in watching the superbowl last night: Go Patriots! There are a couple of things that i've learned from the campaign, which was my first long term experience on a presidential campaign. I've worked on a gubernatorial primary campaign (Robert Reich in '02) and a senatorial campaign that didn't have an opponent (Kerry in '02) as an intern in the past, but neither prepared me for the size and scope of the Dean campaign in NH.
Simply put, we had the best field organization that New Hampshire has ever seen. While there are certain things that could be improved (and which i expect to see improved over the next few presidential electoral cycles), overall we were extremely well organized, on task, and very very motivated. at our peak i believe we had 125 paid staff, another 200 interns, and something like 3000 unique in and out of state volunteers. our operation was massive in scale, but also very well integrated with anyone in the state who were interested in the campaign. our entire GOTV operation depended on "Dean Leaders," local volunteers who were responsible for turning out the 1's and 2's (hard and soft supporters) in their "zone" of about 50-100 people. We had massive phone banks stationed around the state for the day, and we had literally hundreds of people going door to door to make sure people had voted. we had 48,000 identified 1's, and adding in 2's, we had 67,000 people leaning Dean. Dean got about 60,000 total votes in the end count. our 1 count was solid, and in the exit polling we had 40% of people who had chosen a candidate over a month before the primary.
there really is little else we could have done organizationally in NH to do a better job influencing anyone who was interested in the campaign as more than just a passing tidbit. between house meetings and 1:1's (where a campaign staffer would go to someone's house and discuss the campaign and the election with them), we contacted close to 70,000 New Hampshire voters. But Kerry got 75-80k votes. and so we lost.
so what am i getting at? it comes down to this. the best field organization in the world is worth MAYBE 10%. the rest is media coverage. the biggest mistakes we made were these:
a) crappy ads. they're getting better now, but they're still not on par with some of the other things.
b) our stance towards the media. this is the heart of my diary, so i'll be going on about it at length.
the media wanted an insurgent to make the campaign interesting. as far back as november of 2002 you could find glowing articles about Howard Dean in such publications as the Washington Post. over the summer we were the golden candidate, with great press coverage and a media that was portraying us as the new great hope of American politics. things peaked in early December, with the coronation by Al Gore. At that point Dean was pulling 40% in the earliest states, and was even making claims to be the leader in SC. So the media went negative on us in order to tighten the race. consider the spurrious articles dug up by oppo researchers, the "troopergate" scandal, the "dean didn't protect Vermont Yankee well enough" scandal, the sealed records fandango, the iowa caucaus tapes from 6 years ago. and consider how we, the campaign, reacted to it.
We took on a siege mentality, and understood what the media wanted to do. after helping build us up, they wanted a part in tearing us down, and were doing what they could to give play to negative Dean stories. after Iowa was the crecendo, with the overhyping of the Scream speech. And even now the media is back on our side, playing us as the scrappy underdog again after poor showings in NH and Iowa.
we should have expected this, the media's treacherous turning of the tables. and we should have dealt with it better. instead of doing the honorable thing and getting our back up when the media decided to screw us, the campaign (not the supporters who wrote letters to the editors about the most egregious "picklerizations" of the media, but we in the campaign headquarters) should have taken the neccesary steps to pander to the media. instead of talking bravely about breaking up media conglomerates, which is the right thing to do but suicidal to say so, we should have pandered to the talking heads and pundits and projected "cuddly Dean" everywhere we could, a non-threatening guy who the media can get along with. but alas, we had drunk the kool aid of inevitability and teflon, and believed that the negative media wouldn't defeat us, and that they too would come to a reckoning after we toppled King George. it didn't happen. we were mistaken, and i learned a lesson.
i would go into the various dirty tricks played on us, but that might just sound like sour grapes, and should probably get it's own diary. i can say, however, that we didn't play any of our own. the worst thing we did in NH was use a slightly negative flyer on Clark in the beginning of January. we didn't robocall other candidates supporters at 4am, we didn't push poll anyone, we played fair and square. and there's a case to be made that it is an important factor in why we lost. as with the media coverage and our reaction to it, we were simply too noble to accept the detestable requirements of national politics. in some ways, the Dean Campaign is too good for this earth.
