OK, so this Dean event in Cedar Rapids is really different from anything I've witnessed thus far from Gephardt or Kerry, or even Edwards - and it hasn't even started yet.
The Dean campaign here has the gymnasium at Jefferson High organized quite efficiently. Ample press room and camera risers for the TV crews. There is a long, blue curtain drawn across the gymnasium. Using red, white and blue Dean-for-prez signs, volunteers must have spent hours affixing them into rows to form a giant American flag. There are constituency signs ("Latinos for Dean," Dean for Women") plastered about. There is a certain degree of undeniable sweat equity invested.
Dean is still probably about, who knows?, 10 to 30 minutes away from arrival - assuming the normal lag between the stated and actual start times of events which, of course, get later and later as the day proceeds and the delays and snafus accumulate. Yet there is music (U2 mostly) to keep people motivated, and constant chants of "we want Dean."
On the other hand, that ample press room is mostly empty. When the two Dean campaign media buses arrive, the press corps will be supplemented by those who left Des Moines this morning (plus those picked up along the way who have trailed Dean since he returned from Georgia today following the Carter non-endorsement endorsement.)
Still, after weeks of Dean, Dean and more Dean, I wonder if the media have shifted their focus to the other campaigns, most obviously Kerry and Edwards. I only watch TV late at night, and early morning so I really have NO idea what the coverage is like out there. (Feel free, dKos'ers, to give me quick media logs....)
Former Iowa congressman Dave Nagel does the warm-up. His first reason for endorsing and supporting: "I'm here for Howard Dean because I think this country made a tragic mistake" in Iraq.
"I'm here for another reason - you," said Nagel. "I've been in politics for 40 years in this state....I've seen a ton of people come back and new people come in. But more importantly I've seen a leader stand up [for our values]. I think the Democratic Party ought to nominate a Democrat to run for President of the United States."
Red, red meat for this group.
His third reason taps the people-powered theme with which Dean himself ends his stump speeches. Nagel gets the crowd revved with a series of "Who's got the power?" entreaties, all of which are greeted with the standard, "we do!"
OK, must get back to event now.
But a special thanks to Jim, for letting me use his own office computer in the gym office to make these posts in such a timely fashion. Oh, and get off my back about Gephardt, folks. I thought my words were respectful in all the ways Gephardt deserves.
