2004 Presidential Election
 Howard Dean's new campaign manager, Roy Neel, has a post up on the campaign weblog that details the strategy for the rest of the campaign. They are saying that their new strategy, sort of a "Rope a Dope", harkening back to a prizefight in Zaire between Muhummad Ali and George Foreman.
Roy Neel asks the rhetorical question, "Has such a strategy ever worked before?" He answers, "No. It's never been tried." He goes on to say, "But prior to this year, no candidate had ever raised $46 million dollars, mostly from ordinary Americans giving $100 each. Prior to this year no candidate for President had ever inspired the kind of grass-roots activity that has been this campaign's hallmark. Prior to this year no candidate for President had so clearly revitalized his party, allowed it to reclaim its voice, and shifted the agenda so clearly to a call for change."
I'm sure that this is first time I've heard a campaign manager detail strategy on a weblog, not depending on the media or other communication mechanisms to get out the word. Hundreds of thousands of Dean supporters can read the message and act. Right now, of course, Neel hopes they'll act by sending the campaign some dough.  And they have. According to Neel the campaign has collected $2 million since Iowa and $640 thousand since New Hampshire.
Don't forget that the campaign polled contributors, asking what they would be willing to contribute, in the primary, if the campaign turned down federal matching funds. Dean and Neel have an idea of what they can expect to collect still. They seem to be turning the campaign away from the wasteful spending ways they used in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Of course Josh Marshall (and others) think that this is just the kind of noise a campaign makes prior to giving up the ghost. Mr. Marshall is a far more experienced observer than the 'Ol Coyote.
Here's an article from The Nation with details about the Republican Primary in New Hampshire. I dug the link out of the comments to Roy Neel's post on the Dean weblogs. You gotta love weblogs! From the article, "In all, 8,279 primary voters wrote in the names of Democratic challengers to Bush on their Republican ballots. That's a significant number. In the 2000 general election, Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in New Hampshire by just 7,212 votes. Had Gore won New Hampshire, he would have become president, regardless of how the disputed Florida recount was resolved. The prospect that Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters in New Hampshire, and nationally, might be developing doubts about whether Bush should be reelected is the ultimate nightmare for the Bush political team. White House political czar Karl Rove begins his calculations with an assumption that Republicans will be united in their support of the president's reelection. But the president's deficit-heavy fiscal policies, his support for free-trade initiatives that have undermined the country's manufacturing sector, and growing doubts about this Administration's military adventurism abroad appear to have irked not just Democrats and independents, but also a growing number of Republicans."
President Bush is also facing challenges to his 2005 Budget. Here's a post about the President's radio address on the budget yesterday, from BlogsForBush.com.
Well so far Dean's strategy seems to be working. Here are some links to the latest American Research Group and Zogby for Arizona, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, from Taegan Goddard, showing Dean third and/or fourth in each state.
Colorado's own Curious Stranger is linking to Christopher Lydon. Lydon laments the power of big media to influence the nomination process and is urging the movement(s) that drafted Wesley Clark and were (are?) galvanized around Howard Dean to use their power. Quoting Lydon, "There's something about those bloggers, those self-reliant Internet citizens, those activist writers and gabbers, those MeetUp insurgents so glad to be together, on their own hind legs, who drafted Wesley Clark and raised such a storm of clean money and enthusiam around Howard Dean, that makes the masters of media feel lonely and weak. And so they exercise the power they have. The rest of us should do the same."
7:53:22 AM 
|
|
