Clay has a thoughtful, fair-minded and important assessment of why we (i.e., supporters) ever thought Dean was going to win in a walk:
The easy thing to explain is why Dean lost - the voters didn't like him. The hard thing to explain is why we (and why Dean himself) thought he'd win, and easily at that. The bubble of belief, which collapsed so quickly and so completely, was inflated by tools that made formerly hard things easy, tricking us into thinking that getting votes had become easy as well — we were all in Deanspace for a while there.
It's a long-ish piece and I'm not going to try to summarize it, in part because it's too well written (damn that Clay!) and I hope you read the whole thing.
I agree with just about everything the article says. Even so, I think Clay overstates the role of the Internet in our self-delusion: One big reason I thought Dean was going to win quickly was that the polls said he had a huge lead. So, the question isn't simply "Why did Deaniacs think Dean would win easily?" but also "Why did the electorate favor him on clipboards but not in voting booths?" The answers to that question are not pleasant for any Dean supporter to contemplate.
And it wasn't just the polls that led us to believe he was a happenin' guy. In August, crowds of unprecedented size — 5,000, 10,000 — showed up to hear Dean speak. I traveled on the press bus for one leg of the "Sleepless Summer" tour and heard two well-known, hard-bitten journalists for major media outlets whispering to one another: "Have you ever seen anything like this?" "No, and so early in the campaign!" Those crowds weren't an Internet phenomenon, but they had a lot to do with convincing me that Dean's support was wider spread than it has so far turned out to be. (Sure, I was naive, but it wasn't an Internet naivete.)
So, I find myself agreeing with Clay's warnings about how a candidate's Internet campaign can create an unfounded perception of electoral strength, yet also worried that readers will come away with an exaggerated view of the Internet's role in that perception. It wasn't just the Internet that led us into false optimism.
I also want to dispute Clay's assumption that Dean himself thought he'd win easily. I don't know about Dean, but I can tell you that in private conversations I never heard Trippi and Zephyr Teachout express any complacency. A few months ago, when Kerry was raising barely enough money for donuts and tolls, and the press was piling on him for slipping so far back into the pack, I dumbly asked Trippi and Zephyr if they still worried about Kerry. They looked at me like I was nuts —"Damn! There goes my whuffie!" I thought — and said "Absolutely!" Then they went on for a few minutes about how the campaign could turn around in an instant, the need to organize on the ground, etc. So, in my experience, the leaders of the campaign didn't suffer from the hope-inspired delusional thinking that gripped many of us.
Further, despite Clay's belief that the campaign needed to tell supporters that talking on the Internet isn't enough, the message to get out and organize, to change people's minds and create political momentum the old fashioned way, was and is a campaign drumbeat. The social software the campaign created, for example, is focused not on Orkutian ratings and Friendster datings, but on enabling people to organize local events in the real world.
I know this response sounds negative because I'm hitting only on my points of disagreement — that while Clay is right, IMO, about some of the Net's deleterious effects, there were other important causes of our delusion, and the campaign management in my experience did not suffer from the delusion — so let me say it explicitly: Clay has written an important article from which we need to learn and learn quickly.
Disclosure: I still think Dean would make a better president than Kerry and is more electable against W. I still support him.
David,
I have an idea about how to characterize the Dean phenominon positively. How about...
"The Internet is an unbelievably efficient mechanism for gathering like-minded individuals."
You guys attracted all the possible die-hards for your candidate and made them feel like they were doing something very noble and very important. The converse of this line of argument explains the downfall.
-Brad
Posted by Brad Hutchings on February 4, 2004 04:25 AM | Permalink to CommentBrad, what do you think the mechanism or process is by which political campaigns change people's minds (which I assume is the converse you have in mind)?
The answer to that question would help us evaluate the overall strength and weakness of the Internet as a campaign tool.
Posted by David Weinberger on February 4, 2004 08:22 AM | Permalink to CommentDavid
Did you read Arnold Kling's article http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204A.html in which he posited that Dean lost because he was indifferent to the need to change people's minds. This was typified by his most outstanding gaffe, his sound-bite claim that capturing Saddam Hussein had not made America any safer. Kling believes that a case can be made that this was true, but Dean's sound-bite version of "we are no safer" made Dean sound like a crank who was bitter over the success of President Bush in attaining an achievement in Iraq.
You might want to read Kling's entire piece in which he makes a strong case that is important to try to change peoples mind's and it is dehumanizing to refrain from such discourse.
Posted by Mike Sanders on February 4, 2004 09:29 AM | Permalink to CommentI have indeed read Arnold's piece and have corresponded with him about it, mainly about the meta-question of what sort of evidence would let us figure out if Arnold's speculation is true or not. Arnold is (IMO) always worth reading and provocative in useful, thoughtful ways.
I personally find this particular piece farfetched. Arnold picks on one "gaffe" (or, as I took it, "truth-telling incident" :) and says that the problem wasn't even with the content of the statement but that it wasn't backed up. But Dean did explain/defend what he meant. And all campaigns, including Kerry's, are full of unsupported declarations. So, my own belief -- as unsupported as Arnold's -- is that Dean did at least as much as the winning candidate to try to change people's minds, so the cause of his plummet therefore lies elsewhere.
Posted by David Weinberger on February 4, 2004 10:14 AM | Permalink to CommentArnold used Dean's Saddam Statement as an example of his wider thesis that the Left often assume the role of the annointed, with changing people's minds playing a minor or non-existent role. To provide support for that thesis he cites MoveOn's Eli Pariser and Thomas Sowell.
I assume you disagree with Pariser and think it *is* important to try and change peoples minds as opposed to just rounding up the like-minded. Any ideas on how to put more emphasis on the changing-of-the-minds in the new Loose Democracy. (Note: It seems that blogs by-and-large seem to be communitizing the like-minded.)
Posted by Mike Sanders on February 4, 2004 11:24 AM | Permalink to CommentTo "change" someone's perspective you have to somehow get them to, in their mind at least, walk in someone else's shoes.
That is, you have to connect very personally with someone, and get them to shift how they look at the world, at least for a while.
This is not an easy task, and in our soundbite age when discourse and discussion of a serious, substantive and ongoing nature is quite rare, it is an even harder task.
Easier, but less lasting, is the "groupthink" way of changing people's behaviors. i.e. A crowd will tend act in unison, even if the individuals of the crowd might not individually act in that way. This is why mobs happen - and why if you get the members of a mob seperated and alone, even for a while, they will usually drift away.
In the case of Dean, I would personally argue that Dean acted too far in advance of the voting and appears to have coasted (somewhat) towards the final months - during which time supporters gradually fell away, and undecided voters were just then making up their minds - in the absence of much personal, direct contact with the Dean campaign.
Remember as well that most people do not see the long explainations or context to soundbites - whether online or off, we mostly see just the shortest phrases or visual clips of a candidate. The impact of a gaffe is not just the gaffe itself, but that it often seems to show characteristics that don't support the candidate being president in the mind of the voter.
Anyway, good articles and discussions - will be interesting to see where this all leads.
Shannon
Posted by Shannon Clark on February 4, 2004 12:23 PM | Permalink to CommentFor another perspective on this issue:
Note: A slightly earlier version was originally published as an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on Feb. 01, 2004 and titled: "The political is personal -- not Web-based."
The Art of Winning
by Michael Cudahy & Jock Gill
Early last year Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, stormed into the Democratic presidential primary race, his crusade to reform American politics propelled by thousands of small donor, Internet insurgents.
Using the Internet as its fundamental tool, the Dean for America campaign raised in excess of $40 million from approximately 300,000 donors, and persuaded over 600,000 Americans to pledge their support to the upstart political outsider. At the same time, respected members of the national media, fascinated by Dean's innovative operation, prepared to anoint the little known former governor as the Democratic presidential nominee.
"The press became enchanted with the Internet," said Tobe Berkovitz, Associate Dean of Boston University's College of Communication, "but the media's reaction was all out of proportion with the reality of what was going on."
It wasn't until the campaign faced actual voting in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, that Dean's Internet phenomenon was subjected to the crucible of presidential primary politics.
---- for the full essay:
http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/mt/archives/000026.html#more
David,
Actually, the converse I was talking about is that the people the campaign didn't attract (who weren't oblivious or indifferent) weren't likely to be Dean fans (to be polite). He has proved to be a polarizing figure. I think the Intenet stuff helped him find his pole very efficiently.
Presidential politics isn't so much about changing people's minds on the issues. It's about having acceptable political positions (to anchor a base) and then becoming personally attractive to a majority of voters in enough states. Unlike Ralph Nader, Dean is not outside the mainstream on issues. But Dean doesn't make voters feel comfortable with him. Take the Saddam thing... Dean probably made a strong case for his statement in the foreign policy speech he gave the weekend after Saddam was nabbed. But the timing of making such a brash statement was so bad. The electorate doesn't like defiance in that context.
-Brad
Posted by Brad Hutchings on February 4, 2004 02:10 PM | Permalink to CommentJock, yes, I heartily recommend your op-ed piece.
Brad, I certainly agree with your general point (paragraph 2), which you put well. But I don't get your first point. Suppose I paraphrase it as: Presidential politics is about having acceptable positions and being personally attractive enough to draw a majority of people. Dean used the Internet to communicate and to enable those drawn to him to bond and organize. But Dean isn't personally attractive enough to win. He's polarizing.
That paraphrase seems to me to be a plausible point of view. But I'm not getting how the Internet made him polarizing, or increased his polarizitude, or whatever. Am I paraphrasing your point incorrectly? What am I missing?
Posted by David Weinberger on February 4, 2004 05:07 PM | Permalink to CommentDavid,
The Internet helped Dean go from obscurity to record setting fundraiser in Internet time. No doubt about that. In efficiently identifying and bringing in Very Like Minded Individuals to the fold, the Internet angle just as efficiently identified and excluded those who were not of very like mind. These people sharpened their proverbal shovels and waited for an opportunity to bury Dr. Dean.
Somewhere I made the comparison between the Dean campaign and the greatest college football team of all time, Oklahoma 2003. Any idea how frustrating it was during the season for your average USC fan that we were getting no respect at all until the Sooners took our spot in the Sugar Bowl? Of course when the opportunity finally came to dismiss Oklahoma as anything to be reckoned with, we gave it 100% and saved no bile for the illegitimate BCS system that put the Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. While Dean's mantra may have been "Anyone but Bush" to gather his base, it gave rise to an "Anyone but Dean" attitude among his opponents. When the opportunity presented itself after Iowa, who could resist piling on?
-Brad
Excerpt: Clay Shirky has an excellent lengthy post-mortem on what I've taken to call "Dean-ial", the bubble which was the Dean campaign. I believe it's useful to analyze the events in terms of denial/groupthink.
Read the rest...
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