Why Clinton is not Howard Dean

In a Clinton-Obama thread today, someone suggested 'slow and steady wins the race,' like Kerry vs Dean. I say no, and here's why:

Howard Dean jumped out to a big advantage early on in the 2004 campaign season. Dean's success was largely because he was saying what most of us agreed with: the war was garbage, and the only way we are going to win is to be strong Democrats and stand up for what we believe in.

The problem with that, it turned out, was that there are a lot of people in this party who thought that was a losing formula. You can't complain about the war so loudly, they warned. You can't say the invasion was foolish. You can't say the lying president lied through his teeth. You can't say he should have been impeached when there weren't any WMDs. You will lose all the swing voters is you say that stuff.

Dean's collapse resulted from a sudden moment of self-doubt on the part of Democratic primary voters. We agreed with Dean, but we can't just give away the moderate vote, can we? As a group, we chose the safe course over the bold one. Against most of our principles, we chose the anti-Dean in order to win the general election. (Let us never ever ever make that foolish mistake again.)

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is not the darling of the anti-war crowd. No one that I know of supports her because of any specific issue. She's on top because we all know her, we all remember the good she and Bill did, and she has a great organization. She's just plain good. No other candidate can match all of those.

Hillary Clinton isn't on a crusade like Dean, and she doesn't say nearly enough to get herself in trouble. On top of that, Kerry was seen as the candidate of experience as an alternate to Dean who was seen as brash. Hillary Clinton is the moderate candidate of experience in this race.

Who can we run to, if not Hillary? She is more Kerry than Dean.

Many are voting HRC because they think she will win the GE. Is this not the same thinking? Are we making the same mistake?

Democratic principles for the sake of so called moderate appeal to the reich wing impaired.

Some may be supporting her because they think she can win, but there are a lot of other reasons. She's a woman, too. Don't forget that.

In this race, she has a lot of advantages.

Well, that changed my mind. Seriously, any real reasons?

mistake. Remember when he was on one of the Sun. talk shows and said he thought the media conglomerate should be broken up? I believe THAT'S what killed him! He turned the media against him, and no candidate can do that and win. He didn't get ONE good Pressw piece after that comment, and it was only about 2 weeks or so after that comment that the MEDIA aired the "Dean scream" video over, and over, and over.....

Howard really believed in total honesty when he was "THE" Candidate. Hillary is way too seasoned to make THAT mistake!

suck up to the almighty media.

waited until he was elected and THEN initiated the breakup. Howard wasn't an experienced politician. He was an honest American with a strong desire to make America better. He thought being totally honest with the voters was the right thing to do. Although WE agree with that, he either didn't understand, wasn't told, or decided to ignore the advice of those with political experience that were around him. Every candidate knows, or SHOULD KNOW, that the media can make or break you in less than a day!

Yeah that mistake was also very costly.

Against most of OUR principles? Who's principles? Did you poll every Iowa and NH voter on this?

I personally did not vote for Kerry.

This is my assessment based on what I saw & heard and based on the exit polls which show that primary voters agreed with Dean (and still do) but voted for Kerry because they thought he could win. Dumb thing to do.

This is my assessment based on what I saw & heard and based on the exit polls which show that primary voters agreed with Dean (and still do) but voted for Kerry because they thought he could win.

:shrug: Which ones?

An exit poll from NH 2004:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4080563/

From the related article:

"Most of the discontent on the economy was directed at President Bush, not at a particular Democrat. That led to an unusual result on a standard question in such surveys: why individual voters chose the candidate they supported.

Commonly, polling experts said, voters say they choose their candidate because he agrees with them on the issues. The New Hampshire exit surveys indicated, however, that a strong plurality of voters picked their candidate Tuesday because they considered him most likely to defeat Bush in November.

That appeared to translate into support for Kerry.

“It is a greater concern this year than in the 25 years I’ve been involved in politics here in New Hampshire, and I think it has to be worrisome to the Republican White House,” former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, Kerry’s national chairwoman, told NBC News."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4057645/

Kerry seen as able to beat Bush (CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/02/elec04.prez.issues/index.html


The Myth and Math of Kerry's Electability, Slate.Com (excellent article from Feb 11, 2004)
Wm. Saletan

"...Let me say that again: Among voters who picked the candidate they wanted based on the issues, not the candidate they thought somebody else wanted, Kerry did not win the New Hampshire primary."
http://slate.com/id/2095311/

I don't even have to look at a poll for that one. Dean and Kucinich were the loudest war critics. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the majority of Democrats were solidly against the war and against Bush and knew that Bush lied.

You don't seriously need a poll to remind that most Dems were strongly anti-war in early 2004 and that Dean was the major anti-war candidate do you?

Interesting synopsis of the issue, by Peter Beinart (Time Mag) Sept 2004.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041004-702123,00.html

He doesn't link to the polls, but he cites them. Very good "what if" article.

You said, "against MOST of our principles." MOST...plural. You've given one "principle." The Iraq war.

Against most of our principles - the plural should be on people, not on the principles. As in against the principles (anti-war) of most of us.

If my diction was poor on that one, I apologize.

Now stop splitting hairs.

more than one aspect. the most prominent is how the righties WANT to run against her. Just like Kerry. Dean was sunk by the ad-nausium playing of that banshee yell, with the caption that he was Too crazy and unhinged to be President. They (The repukes) have a plan for Hillary. if we nominate her we will see it. if The rest of us go to Biden the repukes will loose. period... They FEAR him. They know they will loose if he is the nominee.

What ever Elvis sang, whether Gospel, Country, Rock or Pop...he was able to sell it vocally.

The "Elvis factor" is NOT about content, it is about being able to "sell" the message, and people loving it.

Regan had it........

Boxer has it.........

Obama has it......

B. Clinton had it........

Dole didn't..........

Gore has it now....but sure didn't in 2000

Dodd has it.........

Richarson not quite....

Biden has it............

Olympia Snowe doesn't.......

Edwards has it..........

Rudy is like Richardson...not quite

Mitt has it..........

Dean had already lost Iowa when the scream took over. Dean losing Iowa is what changed the dynamic of the race. The media's exploitation of the scream did make a bad situation much worse, but it was Kerry's coming out of Iowa with the wind behind him that sunk Dean and everybody else.

Something went wrong a few days before the Iowa Caucus.
It was (in my opinion) that idiotic meme from the other candidates that Dean couldn't win over moderate voters with his brash statements. All the stuff he said was true.

The scream, which we all know was no big deal, was used to doom Dean's campaign. As you said, he was already in a bad situation.

But a combination of what is outlined in posts down thread.

I was (and still am) for Clark, by the way.

:cry:

I don't remember anybody cracking 40% in the nationals before the primaries started. Please correct me if I have that wrong. There seems to be something going on here that didn't apply in 2004 for any of our candidates.

did not have high name recognition with the average man on the street. :shrug:

... so how does "name recognition" explain the 20+ point preference difference?

In 2008 granted Clinton's name recognition would top anybody's, but Edwards' much lower placing in the national polls can't be due to lack of name recognition. If anyone has lack of name recognition it would be Obama, yet he does much better than Edwards, although not as well as Clinton. So I don't think that's it.

Exactly what happened to Howard Dean.

In December 2003, he was on top in national polls AND expected to win Iowa.

Dick Gephardt decided to go on a suicide mission in Iowa and relentlessly attack Howard Dean. Unfortunately, Joe Trippi took the bait and Gephardt and Dean had a pissing contest all over the Iowa airwaves and ultimately all over Iowa. As everyone knows Iowa will often go for the understated candidate, the one who remains "above the fray" and doesn't engage in attacks. Combine that with the ill conceived "perfect storm" and you managed to turn off enough Iowa voters that they didn't both coming out to caucus, despite expressing support. In the end, the Dean camp wasn't able to get their supporters to the polls.

So now Howard Dean had a 3rd place finish in the state he was supposed to win, followed by the scream and WORSE the fact that they had just pissed away nearly 40 million dollars... which kinda hurt when the candidate was running as a fiscal conservative who initial said he could run the entire primary on 20 million. (I still have that letter somewhere, where he stated how he could run a frugal campaign based on ideas and asked for just $50 a month over the next 3 months...) When they asked me for money after pissing away the 40 million, I just photocopied that letter and sent it back to them.

So, let's be honest about this, shall we? Howard Dean didn't lose because of some moment of doubt or because people thought Kerry was more electable.

Howard Dean lost because his campaign in Iowa completely undermined the entire concept of his candidacy. His campaign was turned from a grass-roots effort of people trying to take back their country into a circus that bled money.

Between Kennedy and the fire fighters, Kerry took the ground in Iowa and aced on organization. It was already showing in the polls in the weeks leading into the caucus that Kerry could take it.

Dick Gephardt was running attacks ads directly at Howard Dean CONSTANTLY from December until the primary. Unfortunately, Dean kept firing back. This translated into the polls getting closer and closer as the primary date neared.

The "organizational" aspect was about getting people from their homes to the polls and Kerry knew that part of the game much better. The Dean people had a bunch of untrained "kids" and some Dean supporters received 6, 7, 8 calls the day before and on the day of the caucus remidning them to come out. Dean supporters were getting annoyed, because they were being bombarded by the candidates they were going to support. Many of those people who were considered "strong support" didn't show up to the polls at all... some said afterwards, it was because they were feeling harassed.

Talk about under the radar.

helped either.....brought to Iowa and paid for by various Democrats.

Those were the very words of David Jones. He said it over and over on C-Span. He said they were set up to "bring Dean down."

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1526

"March 4, 2004 — As Mark Twain once put it, "A truth is not hard to kill and a lie told well is immortal."

..."On November 7, 2003, a strange new group no one had ever heard of called "Americans for Jobs & Healthcare" was quietly formed and soon thereafter began running a million dollar operation including political ads against then-frontrunner Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. The commercials ripped Dean over his positions or past record on gun rights, trade and Medicare growth. But the most inflammatory ad used the visual image of Osama bin Laden as a way to raise questions about Dean's foreign policy credibility. While the spots ran, Americans for Jobs—through its then-spokesman, Robert Gibbs, a former Kerry campaign employee—refused to disclose its donors.

..."The Dean campaign cried foul, but no one, including the news media, could figure out exactly who was behind "Americans for Jobs." The disturbing mystery was partly solved by Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post on February 11, after reviewing public Internal Revenue Service records filed under Section 527 of federal tax law. Unfortunately for voters and the general public, that legal disclosure information was filed January 30, 2004, nine days after the Iowa caucuses in which Massachusetts Senator John Kerry upset former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Those contribution records were updated again with another $337,000 in donations on March 4, 2004, for a total of exactly $1 million that the group raised.

...."Americans for Jobs was a street rumble after dark, in which donors or fundraisers for the major Democratic presidential candidates then overshadowed by Dean—Kerry, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and retired General Wesley Clark—all piled on."

The ad is at the link.

That is from the Center for Public Integrity's A Political Mugging in America.

Were there other reasons? Maybe. No campaign is perfect. This was a campaign which took on frontrunner status too soon, and was way too honest for its own good.

Here is what David Jones said on TV

"12/06/04
C-span2 LIVE
Campaign Advertising by "527" Groups

David Jones is saying --
"Our main objective was taking down Howard Dean... he was so far ahead... our concern was that maybe we couldn't fulfill our goal, but could take him down a notch... Gore, Carter all seemed to think he was the winner, so it looked like a cake walk for Dean - but we decided Xmas would be too over the top - but when he was taking a dive even before the scream, it seemed too dangerous to disclose the donors..."


http://c-span.org/Search/advanced.asp?AdvancedQueryText=david+jones+&StartDateMonth=12&StartDateYear=2004&EndDateMonth=12&EndDateYear=2004&Series=&ProgramIssue=&QueryType=&QueryTextOptions=&ResultCount=10&SortBy=bestmatch

You can hear David Jones of Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values at C-Span discuss how he put those 527 ads against Howard Dean
together.

David Jones', short, pithy bit on
what he did in Dec 2003 is about 2:57 into the program. (2 hours 57 minutes in)

Enjoy. This guy wrote, funded and produced the ads. This is what happened. Also, there is a Q&A question for Jones at about 3 hrs 20 minutes in, listen to that as
well.

Why Kerry, of all the candidates in the race?

Because he was the safe guy. The soft-spoken war hero who'd say stuff moderates would like. He would say Bush 'mislead' us because of 'faulty intelligence' instead of saying what we all knew to be true.

Who else was there? Gephardt was on a suicide mission and knew that by running attack ads, he was done. Lieberman and Edwards were both far too hawkish and no one took Kucinich or Al Sharpton seriously.

Once you eliminated Dean, Kerry was the most likely choice AND he had the organization in place to get his people to the polls.

Coverage of "the laughing" is embarassing her to no end right now. All over the newschannels, other channels and the Web. This is seriously damaging her right now. I just saw something on Inside Edition that covered the whole thing, and it was not pretty. She may yet end up not winning the nomination.

She laughed too loud, too late and too often.

Anyone with a TIVO can put together a convincing case that this was a deliberate and pre-planned ploy to make Hillary look more human and more confident, and "deal with" difficult questions by avoiding them.

The only time when it worked to her advantage was the first couple of times she did it on FOX News Sunday (which I never even saw before those YouTube clips).

I don't care how much money Hillary has collected. I still say this race is wide open. Edwards could win. Obama could win. A lot depends on Iowa and the other early states.

Stranger things have happened. But to say its hurting her is a bit too soon, don't you think?

Let's wait a week and see what the polls look like. She 'lost' several of the debates also. And she got a bump in the ensuing polls.

Someone on another site predicted that this might cost her 10 points or more by mid-October. This is getting interesting.

As idiotic as it is. And I believe it is. Maybe the crap about Edwards haircut is why he isn't doing better. The media can grab a detail and use it quite well to turn the public against a candidate.

Isn't that ridiculous?

Abe Lincoln couldn't win today. He'd be laughed out of town for his looks and the thins he would say.

Who don't speak for the rest of the country.