I have been working for some time on my final piece in my blogging of the Iowa Storm experience.
It's been difficult because I have so much psychological foo wrapped up in it. I'm still not over it.
But given that we've been occupying ourselves so much here with "what went wrong," I wanted to be able to share my thoughts, unstructured as they are.
I've been scribbling notes in a little notebook that will eventually be incorporated into a single, long article. Here are those notes.
Warning: This is a long entry.
What went wrong?/Areas for Improvement
- Our locals not prepared for how to work a caucus. The horse trading. Needed better trained precinct captains and hard 1's.
- Drawn into negative fight w/Gephardt and in the process went negative on others, too.
- Ad strategy seemed off. Some negative. Most not slick enough. Simple can still be slick. Not enough positive direct messages. Iraq commercial too negative? Lots to think about here.
- I have doubts about how well canvassers were trained. I agree that telling our own personal stories is powerful, but it should probably be paired with consistent, concise talking points. Canvassers also did not understand the coding system.
- Too much phone banking. I don't agree that we had too much canvassing. It's not canvassing that they were tired of. It was phone calling they'd had too much of. We had stories in the final days of canvassers who met people who said they were impressed because they had not been visited yet by anyone. Also, I have doubts about how well we kept track of our phone contacts as people were getting called multiple times a day! Two phone banking operations going on at once in two different buildings. How can we possibly have been keeping that organized?
- We were intimidated into keeping our observers away on caucus night (by accusations that we intended to illegally participate) while other campaigns, esp. Kerry, flooded caucuses with non-participant observers who illegally participated. Not sure how to fight that as I still think it was probably wise under those circumstances to ask our people not to go. This is where we were doubly killed by not training our locals.
- Canvassing packets had some screw-ups: duplicates, missing stuff, wrong stuff, etc., but I don't think it was a consistent enough problem to be a significant failure in the system (as opposed to just the expected amount of human error in such a massive and complicated endeavor). There was a lot of chaos in Packetland however, so it might be worth thinking of ways to improve that system.
- Ran out of literature, which caused some frazzled nerves for both canvassers and staff.
- Incorrect caucus locations and information.
- Complete lack of caucus location info for Storm phone bankers (whereas the phone bankers at main HQ had lists), and no handy way of finding someone's precinct based on address.
- Too much emphasis on process and the campaign and not enough on issues and vision. Why Dean in the White House?!
- Paradoxically, not enough emphasis on supporters as more than a disembodied concept. Where were they in the commercials?
- Too much emphasis on endorsements.
- Possibly too much emphasis on the out-of-state nature of the Stormers. Might have been some backlash against outsiders coming in to tell them what to do. Also a symptom of us being too enamoured of ourselves.
- More emphasis on the You Have the Power message off-blog? (Or do people really actually want the power? I don't know.) IOW, we spend too much time telling people about how much Dean has energized people without telling them WHY. How are they supposed to catch that energy?
- Not enough done to counter the anger thing. It's not enough to have the candidate tell Judy Woodruff that we're about hope. We needed a concentrated media strategy for this. Ads, ads, ads! Our ads did very little for us in this regard.
- Incoming volunteers could have been utilized better to play to their strengths. Most were just shoved into canvassing. Longer-termers were not necessarily placed well. There were complaints about the training, which in addition to some conversations I had with some Stormers, led me to believe that there were volunteers who should have been doing training who weren't, and some who were doing training who shouldn't have been. Greater organization prior to the Storm might have lessened this problem (though there was no way to avoid it completely, given the sheer numbers that poured in right up to the last minute). Storm staff needed greater support and resources earlier to allow them to do this. Until a couple weeks before the Storm started, the entire Storm staff was operating out of a single room. Not good.
- Dirty tricks. Kerry push polling. Kerry "Persuaders," etc.
- Not enough of the right kind of cheerleading. It's true that the blog is a campaign publication, but that doesn't mean that it's appropriate or helpful to talk nearly exclusively about how great we are. Tough love cheerleading is still cheerleading and it reminds us what's at stake. Less "aren't we awesome!" please and more "campaigns are hard work and can turn on a dime and no lead is safe, work work work!" This is particularly true for a campaign made up largely of people who don't have the experience to know the tougher truths already.
The Scream
Not a damn thing wrong with it, however it is also the campaign's responsibility to be aware of the media and they are nothing if not utterly predictable on this score. We already know they dampen crowd noise. Jefferson Jackson dinner anyone? It's SOP. We already know they've been trying to pin this whole angry, unhinged thing on us for months. We walked right into it. Yes, I love Gov. Dean for loving us enough to want to give his all for us in that moment, but I also understand that we want him in the WH. That speech, wonderful and perfect as it was for us in the room, really ought to have been delivered to the cameras. That's a reality we're going to have to face. There's a chance we may yet get away with this one. We won't get another one. There is letting Dean be Dean and then there is shooting yourself in the foot. Do we want to win or not? Media awareness matters. That said, the campaign should not be pissing and moaning about the media. Let us do that. That's what we're here for. Dean shouldn't say much of anything about it beyond an offhand remark here or there dismissing the attention as silly. That's it. Any more serious critique must come from outside the official campaign. We're here for that. Let us run w/it.
Personally...
It was deafening in there. I still only heard about half of what was said. It was just what I needed. I had been in tears most of the night and this helped immensely.
I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I left it all on the field and we got drubbed anyway.
I felt personal guilt and responsibility and that wreaked havoc on my brain for a long time. This is significant because this campaign has deliberately constructed itself out of people like me who have taken personal ownership of it. I'm not sure if there's anything to be done in terms of managing the individual psychology of the campaign but it will certainly be an interesting dynamic to watch. We've seen hints of this playing out on dKos over the last couple of weeks.
I didn't think I could vote for Kerry that night. And I spend the next several days (and even now) careening wildly from position to position: Democratic loyalty, loyalty to principles, desire to do what's right for the country (and even that didn't always seem like the same thing, moment to moment). I wanted to fight but didn't know what that meant anymore. I wanted to rage and wallow. I wanted to (and did) cry. I wanted to throw myself at Trippi's feet and beg forgiveness for failing him after I had looked him straight in the eye and told him not to worry, promised that we'd get it done. Of course, I realized with a couple of days' perspective that there was pelnty of forgiveness to be begged from all corners, including Trippi's, and that I had not so much made a promise of results as I had spoken of my determination to make it true, and there's no question that I had given all I had to give. I also realized that it was not forgiveness any of us needed, but rather honesty and clarity fueling a reflective determination to understand and adjust and fight the next battle.
On the drive home, speeding by the very same fields I'd sped by on caucus night, this time bathed in sunlight, I felt I could do this every day and be content. I could see myself making a thousand such drives anywhere in America, putting out fires for a cause I believed in. I realized I'd felt comfortable in my own professional skin for the first time ever. I was not sorry to be leaving Iowa (esp. when I got my first ever speeding ticket from Iowa's finest), but I was conflicted about leaving the Storm.
And when I got home, I had the unmistakable (and even now unshakable) feeling of not being where I was supposed to be. I put on my coat, hat and gloves tonight to walk down to the diner at Devon and Clark (where I now scribble in the same notebook I used at the caucus), and I felt as if I were walking through a dream. I've lived in this same apartment for over six years, and tonight it felt like a strange neighborhood. Is this really where I live? In a powerful way, the answer is no. These streets feel like the sidelines of a game I have a personal stake in now. I can no longer sit on the sidelines. In my dreams each night since Tuesday the 20th, I continue my work. I make canvassing packets. I hand out literature. I make phone calls. I watch caucus after caucus unfold before my mind's eye. I tally 1's, 2's and 5's and silently rage at 6's. I vow over and over again never to give up. I wake up both exhausted and driven, but still trapped in the unfolding aftermath of Iowa (and now NH) and my own uncertainty about what comes next in my life. I've watched a lot of C-Span (avoiding cable news, though), some DVDs, spent a lot of time on-line absorbing other peoples' own aftermaths, doing some actual work for my paying job, and all the while feeling my inner self pounding fists against the walls of my old life, demanding to be let out again, having gotten a taste of the exhilirating and bittersweet air of involvement, self-determination, service and freedom.
What happens if/when the hundreds (if not thousands) of others who are feeling the same way get their broken hearts handed to them finally by politics as usual? Will we fold? Will we find new reasons and new ways to fight? What a tragedy to lose this!
We should fight on to the end. We drive this race. We frame the issues. That's no small thing and it is worth doing no matter what.
And then what? How do we harness our energy?
If Dean does drop out, I intend to make it my purpose to keep his army active, energized and vocal. There is no reason for us to stop. We are a force for good. We must remain such. How can there be any other choice?
