... Did the Dean campaign spend $1M on travel in Wisconsin, or have funds been saved for post-WI spending? What follows is speculation about one possible post-WI scenario for Howard Dean.
... Democratic primary wisdom presumes the existence of three tickets out of Iowa, one each for the first, second and third-place winners. Starting the day after the 2004 Iowa Caucuses, media saturation by The Dean Scream confiscated both Howard Dean's third-place and John Edwards' second-place Iowa Tickets.
Boston Globe
article, 2/17/04:
"...Howard Dean and his top advisers decided to seek political rejuvenation by
taking a stand in the Wisconsin primary ... the campaign sent out an e-mail to 660,000 supporters on Feb. 5, seeking donations.
The entire race has come down to this: We must win Wisconsin," said the message, which bore Dean's electronic signature. "We must launch our new television advertisement on Monday in the major markets in Wisconsin. To do that, I need your help to raise $700,000 by Sunday.
... not only meeting the goal of $700,000, but continuing to donate as the campaign doubled the goal to $1.4 million. As of last night, the tally stood at $1.3 million.
... a media consortium in Wisconsin released an analysis of advertising spending in the state ... Dean had not spent the $700,000 he said he needed for television ads, having booked only $227,000 worth as of last Friday. ... Edwards had booked $316,000 worth of ads, while Kerry had $263,000.
... a Dean spokesman, said yesterday that the campaign did not mislead its supporters, despite the specificity of the appeal.
... We have enough on TV to be competitive, we have a lot in the field, and we're traveling more than anybody else," Carson said. "This money is being spent on Wisconsin. It's just being spent in different ways."
Did the Dean campaign spend $1M on travel in Wisconsin, or have funds been saved for post-WI spending? What follows is speculation about one possible post-WI scenario for Howard Dean.
Let us begin with the premise that Howard Dean is both stable (re: The Scream) and competently advised. His campaign has innovated in outreach techniques that benefit not just Democrats, but political parties everywhere that will seek to emulate Dean's success in bringing new voters to the political process.
Iowa brought Dean a mutually destructive conflict with Dick Gephardt and concluded with an organizational failure by the Perfect Storm volunteers. The combination resulted in Dean's poor third place showing in Iowa, a dramatic fall from grace for a front-runner.
Democratic primary wisdom presumes the existence of three tickets out of Iowa, one each for the first, second and third-place winners. Starting the day after the 2004 Iowa Caucuses, media saturation by The Dean Scream confiscated both Howard Dean's third-place and John Edwards' second-place Iowa Tickets.
In the week following the Iowa Caucuses, Diane Sawyer's prime-time interview of The Deans partially restored maturity to the Dean campaign, but the damage had been done. Former front-runner Dean managed only a second-place showing in his home region of New Hampshire, twelve points behind fellow New Englander John Kerry's 38%.
In a post-NH shakeup, Dean campaign chairman Joe Trippi was replaced by a former telecom lobbyist. A stumbling insurgency was being treated with gene transplantation. Following New Hampshire, the Dean campaign continued to receive free media, well in excess of that granted to the Edwards campaign. Concurrently, Dean raised more money online than either Edwards or Clark.
Wisconsin votes today and early exit poll reports suggest that Dean will manage only a third-place showing in his declared "last stand" state. Dean could soldier on to Super Tuesday primaries, but it will be difficult for him to ask supporters for funds after failing to deliver Wisconsin (with moderate spending on TV ads).
A big gap remains between potential and actualization for Dean The Candidate. Dean's most valuable contribution was arguably the voice he gave to a previously silent constituency of voters. That energy could be channeled into a organization, but without the attention magnet that is Howard Dean, few organizations could sustain his audience.
There is a radical solution - Independent Dean. Old-school Democratic voters have already been scared 10 miles away from Dean to hide behind a 10 foot fence. If Dean leaves the Democratic Party to run as Independent, only diehard Deaniacs would follow him. A legitimate case could be made that diehard Deaniacs would never support a traditional Democrat or Republican candidate, they would instead sit out the election.
An Independent Dean candidacy would be a media earthquake. New voters that Dean could bring to the 2004 election would prevent facile comparisons to Nader 2000. Sustained free media attention between now and November would be a major contribution to American democracy and campaign financing. Record turnouts for Democratic Primaries would become record turnouts for the General Election.
Independent Dean would provide everyone with an incentive to participate in Election 2004. Motivated Deaniacs would require the Democratic Party to develop their own outreach to new voters. A bigger anti-establishment voice would require a competitive response from both established parties. Dean could wipe away memories of past stumbles with an escalation of insurgency, as combative foil to two parties.
The transition to Independent Dean could begin by reinstating Trippi, as Democratic endorsements slowly retreat. Gene reversal would only bolster Dean's independent and insurgent credibility. It would bring self-consistency to Dean's criticism of John Kerry as "the lesser of two evils". That would be defensible as an Independent. It is irresponsible as a Democrat.
Could this scenario influence the John Edwards campaign? There is risk that Edwards' Wisconsin ticket could be confiscated by a reprisal of the Scream's media saturation.
University of Virginia political science professor Larry J. Sabato said in the Washington Post, 1/30/04: [emphasis added]
"... If Edwards ends up fading from the race, he will mainly have Howard Dean and his scream to blame. The now infamous rant--which was greatly overplayed by the press--absorbed the media attention that should by rights have gone to Edwards for his stunning close second place finish in Iowa ..."
Dan Rather said in the
Houston Chronicle, 2/14/04: [emphasis added]
"... as much as the shout heard 'round the world speeded an already discernible downward trend in the fortunes of presidential candidate Dean, it might also have slowed and obscured a discernible upward tick in the fortunes of presidential candidate Edwards. Perhaps, for his candidacy, fatally so.
... Would Kerry have been making that speech if the second-biggest story out of Iowa -- after that of Kerry's upset win there -- had been Edwards' surprise No. 2 placing? When future political scholars look to the Dean debacle as a case study of how a candidacy can implode, maybe they will also note the way such an implosion can suck the oxygen from the campaigns around it.
The Scream elevated the immune system of campaigns, students, political observers and especially the media. Post-Scream reporters and editors can no longer plead innocence while sensational saturation deprives competing candidates of media oxygen.
Post Scream Media can cover an Independent Dean and competing candidates with objective balance or conscious culpability.
We await the verdict.