The Dean campaign is starting to turn things around and I liked the good doctors on Diane Sawyer's interview. But Iowa appears to have been a mess: precinct captains not trained, too much reliance on inaccurate hard ones, an invasion of volunteers and a flood of phone calls who may have turned off a lot of caucus-goers, and not very inspiring campaign ads.
It appeared to me, from all the hints that I got, was that the campaign was indeed a grassroots, volunteer-driven campaign that drank far too much of its own Kool-aid. Put differently, it wasn't very professional.
And why can't the campaign put out classy, interesting, persuasive ad campaigns that convince people the Howard Dean is a viable candidate? There are plenty of people among his volunteers, it seems, who could help with that. Or hire a truly professional and creative advertising group to work for the campaign.
Karen Hicks in New Hampshire seems like a very competent professional. Should she be given a greater national role after Tuesday? Is Joe Trippi good enough to run a campaign all the way to the White House? After all, Bush is looking increasingly vulnerable to any candidate who makes a strong professional effort.
And what about Dean's handlers? Does any of them know how to help him attain the right balance of passion and cool intellect that will play well with the voters and the press? Does any of them know how to stroke the press and bring them over to Dean's side?
I've got a lot of questions after the Iowa debacle. And it WAS a debacle - Dean got only half the caucus support of Kerry who came out of nowhere. The union support for Dean wasn't there. His volunteers were poorly trained.
Hey, isn't it time that Dean made some hard decisions, that he gets rid of some people, hire others, and shift still others around to where they may work best? If he really wants to win, does the have the cold, hard, steel running down his backbone to take charge of his campaign?
I'm stuck out here in the Wisconsin hinterlands. I don't see the campaign up close, I don't know Howard Dean. I don't even have any TV to watch the happenings. My primary campaign source is right here on dKos. I suppose we'll find out about Dean over the next few weeks. But I'd like to know if anybody out there in dKos-land has any useful insights. Many thanks!
