Back in August-October, a few stories appeared comparing the early success of of Bernie Sanders’ campaign with that of Howard Dean’s back in 2004. The Sanders campaign said they have learned from Dean’s mistakes, and are studying many other campaigns as well- including Obama’s, which many also considered an “insurgent” campaign (as a Sanders supporter, I genuinely hope they’re right).
In August, the Washington Post interviewed Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi (considered by some to be a “political genius”) Joe Trippi Interview:
THE FIX: How much of what Howard Dean was experiencing in 2003 do you see in Sanders right now? Is there a key strain that runs from the Dean campaign directly through the Sanders bid?
Trippi: I see more big differences than similarities between the Dean and Sanders campaigns. It starts with the structure of the race. We faced three establishment Democrats not one. John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards were three strong candidacies that were splitting the vote and donor support of the party establishment in 2003. So when we started to move we actually took the lead in national polls and in each of the key states.
Sanders faces a completely different problem. No one is splitting the party establishment with Hillary. She has it all to herself. When we were at 30 percent we had the lead. Sanders gets to 30 percent and he is still 25 points behind.
He then adds a problem even Bernie (and many others) concedes is significant:
Sanders is going to have a much more difficult time overcoming Hillary's advantage in the African American community and that is eventually going to be a big problem as the campaign turns to South Carolina and beyond. In fact if he can't solve it, he can't win.
Trippi then talks about the pluses and minuses of an insurgent candidacy:
The biggest difference between them, and the one that could benefit Sanders, is that he isn't a threat to the Democratic establishment. They just don't see him becoming a threat to actually win the nomination. That's a good thing. Because when the establishment saw us as a threat to win the nomination they hit us with everything they had to stop us. No one in the party establishment is hacking away at Sanders. Yet.
Later, in an October interview with the “Center for Public Integrity” (CBI Interview), Trippi elaborates on that point:
Trippi: We scared the daylights out of the establishment, but that was about all we were able to do. Both party establishments are pretty good at making sure that a candidate who isn’t of the establishment doesn’t make it.
Center for Public Integrity: What about Barack Obama?
Trippi: You could argue that Obama beat the establishment in 2008, or was able to co-opt enough of them after he got enough small-dollar donations online. But — if you count him — he’s the rare exception…
Trippi: It’s not just the money. A lot of the rules and things are set up to stop insurgent candidates.
Center for Public Integrity: What do you think would happen if Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton in Iowa?
Trippi: The entire Democratic establishment would come out of the woodwork to stop Bernie Sanders from being the nominee. The establishment fervently believes that a socialist cannot be president of the United States.
And earlier in a USA Today piece (USA Today):
“The one thing I can tell you for sure is until the establishment starts attacking the living daylights out of him, he’s no threat,” Trippi said. “The second he becomes a threat, you will know.”
In the weeks before the Iowa caucus, Dean surged into the lead, bolstered by an endorsement by former Vice President Al Gore — and the attacks intensified.
“Hardly a day would go by without a Scud missile, fueled by opposition researchers digging deep into Dean’s personal history and his record as governor, sailing into our Burlington headquarters,” [Bob] Rogan said [deputy campaign manager for Dean].
And, finally:
Dean, who did not respond to messages seeking comment for this article, told Vermont Public Radio last month that he should have changed the tone of his message when he surged into the lead.
“I had a problem because I had run as an insurrectionist candidate, and people don’t elect the insurrectionist as president of the United States,” Dean said.
“It’s possible that Sanders could embarrass Clinton in Iowa just as in New Hampshire,” said Dennis Goldford, professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. “It’s hard to see how he goes beyond that.”
Now, the Sanders’s camp responds in a September “USA Today” piece (USA Today):
A Sanders spokesman said the campaign is drawing from a broad history.
“I think he’s looked at lots of prior campaigns and absorbed some lessons from them,” said Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs, “and also is pursuing his own path that’s different in a lot of ways.”
Sanders, in his interview with the Des Moines Register, acknowledged Clinton’s advantage among non-white voters.
“I will not deny for a moment that we have a lot of work to do. We are going to do that work,” Sanders said. “We think we can and should do well within the African-American community and the Latino community.”
CHAIN OF VOLUNTEERS
The Sanders campaign will try to get beyond New Hampshire and Iowa with what it calls an innovative grassroots organizing effort.
“We’re moving into a new phase of the campaign,” Sanders told the Des Moines Register editorial board this month.
Sanders’ digital team is leading the effort by building a massive volunteer structure, said digital director Kenneth Pennington.
Pennington said the Sanders camp organized people who signed up at thousands of simultaneous house parties on July 29 into a pyramid structure that relies heavily on volunteers leading other volunteers.
The campaign can expand rapidly because not every volunteer has to be supervised and trained by a staffer, Pennington said.
“What we’re doing online is kind of using digital tools in order to organize people outside of the early states where we don’t have a large field presence yet,” Pennington said.
The Dean campaign was “famous for kind of starting this distributed organizing,” Pennington said. Former Dean campaign staffer Zack Exley is one of two people leading the volunteer structure for the Sanders campaign.
But Dean is just one among many sources of inspiration, he said.
“We’re learning from every campaign, so it’s not just Gov. Dean’s campaign,” Pennington said. “We’re learning from what the Obama campaign did, which was really impressive on a grassroots level, and we’re trying to make it better.”
Briggs, the Sanders spokesman, also pointed to the limitations of looking to Dean’s campaign alone in measuring the latest presidential bid by a Vermonter.
“I would shoot for doing better than Gov. Dean did,” he said.
Personally, I sure hope so...
