Good points.

Of course, what you're saying has everything to do with message and nothing to do with the internet per se.

What Dean's team failed to notice was:
1) The falling salience of appeals to purity (e.g. Iraq, NCLB)
2) The need to reach out to other groups (e.g. women)
3) The need to not get knocked off-message once most voters started paying attention
4) That their meetup and signup numbers plateaued around September.

I mean, it's like they didn't have a pollster at all...

Hey A.L.

TNR started up a new blog, and it looks like it's just right for you!!

You've been Iraq'd!!!

I think what frustrated me the most, though, is that he's been criticized not on his real (or at least, politicking) failures, like the ones you've pointed out... but rather on really esoteric stuff like The Scream (that, as we now know, wasn't much of a scream at all).

That and the inexplicable pile-on for his "Capturing Saddam did not make Americans safer" comment, which I fully agree with.

Let's face it, even our men and women in Iraq have still been frequently attacked and killed. Capturing Saddam was, IMHO, little more than a nice PR coup at this point. The guy whose name starts with O is -- wow, imagine this -- still at large, and isn't he the guy that actually attacked us in the first place?

I agree with the original post, and especially with Adam's comment directly above. One more point: I don't have a TV, but even a lot of dedicated Deaniacs report that he saturated Iowa with television ads that (most common word used) sucked.

For an Internet campaign, this was a special problem, because it resulted in a failure to reach out to a (very large) additional layer that was going to pay attention to these ads.

(And that's not to mention the expense!)

Kerry has many vulnerabilities, so let's see what happens now that he has the limelight. I will grant, he has a good sense of timing. And the Democrats' possibilities certainly won't be hurt by the >$500Bn deficit (it's probably close to 750 after you add the post-election Iraq supplemental and AMT reform).

Adam, you remind me of myself around 2001-2002, but that's not a good thing. Bush is not stupid or evil. Conspiracies are the exception, most are imagined. Natural moral instincts are often better than complex intellectual rationalizations. The world is a better place because some people decided to make it a better place. There are quite a few people in the world who are right now trying to kill you, your family and your friends, nothing you can do, except dying, will appease them.

Dean's biggest practical fault was that he didn't scale well. I'm sure still has far more supporters nationwide than the entire population of Vermont. That's not saying much though, 10 times the entire population of Vermont commutes into Manhattan each work day. In the midst of a campaign where you're surrounded day after day by people who believe you should lead the world, I imagine it's quite easy to perspective.

The organization Trippi created was astounding, too bad it wasn't supporting a more balanced, (and rational) centrist candidate. I still think Trippi should probably replace Terry McAuliffe if the Democrats are serious about being a competitive party again.

Nice analysis, AL. The question is, would it have been possible (given sharper tacticians) to expand Dean's appeal out of this original base? I would argue not, since the original base exaggerated its own importance and strength to an almost mind-boggling degree, AND kept close watch (via, once again, the infamous internet) over his every move. It's unclear whether Dean was ever INCLINED to move, or whether he was simply putting it off for summer. But the point is, he was going to be blocked by the vocal minions at his core if and when he made that move, and it would have gotten real ugly, real fast (for him AND for Democratic Party).

To Adam, I can only say that if you really believe the "scream" was anything more than the icing on the cake, you need to dig a little deeper. For me, the greatest joke is that a guy who wears the mantle of fiscal rectitude with such pride seems to have no idea his campaign burned through its cash in record time. Trust me, I'll take care of the deficit. By doing what, replacing Greenspan with Trippi? It is to laugh.

I think its that terrible toothy grimace.

"I still think Trippi should probably replace Terry McAuliffe if the Democrats are serious about being a competitive party again."

Re-building "the Machine" will make no difference if the party doesn't have a message that resonates with 51% of voters,which it doesn't.In the hands of a credible Democrat candidate(an oxymoron?)Dean's record in Vermont could have been a real problem for Bush.

It's certainly an interesting issue, A.L. I've been reading the comments on Dean's BlogforAmerica, and that gave me two impressions that may be relevant here: (1) the Dean campaign has more than its share of a serious flaw: being apparently blind to feedback. Most of what I read there, whether from Deaniacs or from campaign staff, was about the role of Others in Dean's crash.

Those others included, famously, the media, the other candidates who said nasty things about Dean, and the voters who were too stupid to realize that Dean was the answer to all their problems. Of course, without sensitivity to feedback, there was no way for the Dean campaign to get better or even to prevent itself from getting worse.

(2) The emotional tone of the Dean website is quite remarkable: their message is not "Vote for me and you will be happy" but "Campaign for me and you will be happy." So much of Dean's message seemed to be about how bad politics is and how good the campaign process was for Deaniacs. They had no stomach for the messy business of everyday life, for integrating points of view and trading off interests. And they felt loved and valued in their meet-ups and campaign offices. The Dean message (Against Washington insiders and For ordinary Americans) could be read as warning children not to talk to strangers, that the world outside is bad. This may be unfair but the impression I got from reading the comments quite extensively was that the commenters were looking for something like the warmth and security of a home with loving, all-wise parents.

Perhaps that is what turned Democratic party voters off - that sense that the campaign was more about the campaigners than about America.

Of course, being a psychologist, I tend to think in these terms!!

Very insightful, everyone - and Patrick, the psych cross section really resonated.

I'll simply note that it echoes a larger mental framework one sees often on much of the Left (and on some small sections of the religious Right): that everything is about how things make one feel - and results are incidental.

I'm not surprised to find this worldview influencing the Dean campaign as well, with predictable results... though it does cheer me somewhat to note that it contains a bit of its own Darwinian cure.

I suspect these dynamics apply on a larger scale as well. Those of us who see "The War on Bad Philosophy" in very gloomy terms might consider the implications of that if true, and smile a bit.

I agree with AL in his analysis of
Dean.

Someone else mentions Kerry's challenges.
I see many of them , but do you believe he
will be the Demon's nominee or not.

As a confirmed agnostic, he turns off a
large part of America.

They cracked the fundraising issue, which was a great achievement, but then seemed to believe that you could use the money to buy more votes, principally through advertising, which was disastrously wrong.

Trippi seems to have had a huge conflict of interest on this issue, which may have affected his ability to analyze it (he and his partner were the commission-paid agents buying Dean's ads). Dean himself appears to have been monumentally naive about this, and basically clueless about how the money was being spent.

I'll simply note that it echoes a larger mental framework one sees often on much of the Left (and on some small sections of the religious Right): that everything is about how things make one feel - and results are incidental.

I think it's more balanced than you admit, Joe.

Abstinence-only education, anyone? Not exactly supported by a "small section" of the right at all.

Mandatory minimum sentencing?

Crackdowns on immigration?

These are all things that make the right feel great, but don't actually solve anything.

I can cite many more examples.