Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

The Democratic Party infrastructure is really missing out these days by not understanding the wonderful innovations of the Howard Dean campaign. I konw it's easy to reference the Scream and dismiss Dean as crazy, but his campaign was astonishingly successful in so many ways. So while I understand that kind of reaction in general, I am both shocked and amazed by how many dedicated and active Democrats still refuse to acknowledge just how awesome the Dean campaign was. This is a quote from the Washington Post, about a progressive group in Colorado trying to reproduce the grassroots energy of Dean for America:

ProgressNow said it has encountered some resistance from local Democratic Party officials who fear the effort will siphon people and money from their activities. Patricia Waak, who heads the state party, acknowledged that some see the group as little more than unwanted competition. She said that she wished it would somehow work through the party, but that she nevertheless supported its efforts.

"The fact is that they're going on a premise here that worked for Howard Dean when he was running and was pretty effective for him," Waak said. "But in the end, it still only picks up a certain group of people. There are still tons of people out there who don't even have a computer and who could care less what blogs say."

The Dean campaign accomplished a very difficult task: they got all their supporters active in their campaign. People really believed they could make a difference in the Dean campaign, because that was the truth. They could. Not only did the Dean campaign recruit its supporters across the country to write handwritten letters to Iowans explaining why they supported Howard Dean, the idea itself came from an everyday supporter commenting on the Dean campaign blog.

But let me comment on those two remarks I boldfaced above:

she wished it would somehow work through the party,

I'm actually sort of torn on this one in the larger sense. As you recall, Democrats had a lot of different groups working for them last year: not just the Kerry campaign and the DNC, but MoveOn, the Media Fund, Americans Coming Together, and so on. The Republicans just had the Bush campaign working with the RNC, and they wound up with the superior field campaign. So maybe, in general, unified fronts work well.

But here they don't. Think of where the Howard Dean campaign would be if it worked closely with the rest of the Democratic Party and asked permission before they did anything. The reason the Dean campaign succeeded was because it was bold and unafraid to challenge the party establishment. If the folks at ProgressNow tried working through the state party, they would be put on the phones to do fundraising or persuasion calls within hours, and in a few days only the diehards would remain. But by trying to be an independent group doing new things, the members are free to be fun and creative, and like the Dean campaign, they're likely to stumble upon something that works.

I would understand if the establishment Democrats in Colorado didn't see that logic. I don't understand how this was the biggest campaign story of 2003, and yet they completely missed it.

in the end, it still only picks up a certain group of people.

Completely true. You know what else only picks up a certain group of people? TV ads. And field programs. And every other campaign strategy ever invented. Look, there are a zillion feverishly Democratic individuals out there who don't participate in politics because they don't like what they'd be doing and/or they don't think it would make any difference. If you ask me (and in other words, I'm completely right here), we should get those people involved any way we can, and if this kind of group is what it takes to do it, let's make it happen.

But again, that attitude above misses the larger point. Sure these groups only get upper-middle-class Internet-connected activisits. So what? Can those people do anything? Answer: you better believe it. Besides the manpower they provide, if you get those people to start chucking in $50 donations every few months, and if you keep them feeling empowered in the politics of their state and country, you've got a donor for life. I have no idea how this doesn't resonate. And even if it doesn't, at the very least you've got a more and more well-informed electorate who can go out into the world with ammunition to counter Republican misinformation. So yes, these campaign groups will only take in a certain group of people, who could make a really big difference.

(I think I've seen it before, but the title and image come from a list of ready.gov Homeland Security warning signs and what they actually mean. Courtesy of, believe it or not, bentickner.com.)