POLITICS: How Howie Did It
Fund, John H.
POLITICS JOHN H. FUND How Howie Did It SACRAMENTO HEN AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine invited me to accompany him to one of the 1,420 Howard Dean house parties held across the country last December...
...He then urged those listening in on what he called the "largest conference call in history" not only to contribute to his campaign but to travel to Iowa to campaign for him in its January caucuses...
...Still, those Republicans who dismiss Dean as the second coming of George McGovern, who lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in 1972, are misjudging the mettle of the man...
...In Dean's case he can't easily change his stripes...
...I've been to Amway and Tupperware house parties and the Dean organization could teach those veterans of the enthusiastic pitch some tricks of the trade...
...It also gave tips such as asking party goers to write any friends they had in Iowa or New Hampshire and urge them to vote for Howard Dean...
...Dean won the "invisible primary" with the only groups paying attention to the race while most Democrats weren't paying him much notice...
...A scant 14 percent knew "a great deal" or "a good amount" about him...
...E1/4 John H. Fund is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com, the website of the Wall Street Journal editorial page...
...W After all, Deaniacs have helped make their man both the front-runner for the Democratic nomination and the focal point for the liberal sport of "Bush Bashing...
...The liberals gathered for his house party granted him instant absolution for that sin...
...Al and Tipper Gore came on briefly to introduce Dean, who Gore said was "reinvigorating democracy itself...
...All of this support for Dean emerged during the party's "invisible primary," that year-long event in which activists, donors, pollsters, and political reporters anoint a front-runner with minimal input from most voters, who lead lives that leave them too busy to spend much time on politics until the election is upon them...
...Dean even told reporters that he left the Episcopal Church and become a Congregationalist because "I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church over a bike path...
...That's not a moral struggle that much of the country will relate to...
...Until his recent strained efforts to cite Jesus on campaign swings to the South, Dean was also easily the most secular major presidential candidate inmodern times...
...Democrats may come to regret the lightning-fast primary schedule they adopted in an effort to choose an early opponent to President Bush...
...He has vaulted to the front of the Democratic pack by being the candidate of the angry, Bush-hating left and done so in a way that emphasizes his lack of humor and warmth...
...In 1992, their support proved crucial in securing Bill Clinton's nomination for president...
...In contrast, Dean was a pragmatic governor of Vermont who appears to be less ideological than many of his followers...
...Now they have become the two biggest unions in the AFL-CIO as power in the union movement slowly shifts from private sector unions to those who quite literally are part of the government...
...George McGovern was a hapless true believer, who sincerely believed in his plan to confiscate wealth through confiscatory inheritance taxes and wanted America to "come home" by disengaging from the world...
...The party hosts had received a "party management" kit in the mail chock full of instructions on how to become expert at separating small donors from their cash...
...Left-wing literary critic Camille Paglia sniffs that she can't stand Dean because he has a "dour, dyspeptic, sanctimonious persona...
...one of them quipped...
...9:30 p.m...
...That kind of small change has been supplemented by a flood of big-dollar contributors...
...In Iowa alone AFSCME now has 28,000 members, almost double the number it had 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2004 JOHN H. FUND in 1988 when Gephardt won the Iowa caucuses and manufacturing unions dominated the state's Democratic politics...
...back east) as it came time to listen to the campaign conference call...
...While he won't easily shed his persona or his left-wing supporters, if Dean is the nominee he will be more tactically adroit than McGovern and will have a more skilled campaign team...
...Democrats may come to regret the lightning-fast primary schedule they adopted...
...I wouldn't mind what George Bush was doing as much if I felt he had been elected legitimately," administrative assistant Lynn Simpson told me...
...Dean even felt safe in abandoning the public financing system so beloved by those good government liberals who back his candidacy...
...FEBRUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 37...
...Dean's disembodied voice then gave a bumper sticker version of his stump speech: "This is a campaign about us, not about me...
...After the Dean pitch was over the fundraising began and soon topped several hundred dollars from the 20 or so in attendance...
...Dick Gephardt, but public sector unions such as the Service Employees International and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have signed on with Dean...
...A late December poll by the Washington Post found that a full 55 percent of the Democrats surveyed knew "hardly anything" or "nothing" about Dean and his leadership abilities...
...Beating George Bush requires the breaking of a few ideological omelets...
...Nationwide, according to the Dean campaign, the house parties attracted some 22,000 guests and raised over $500,000, or about $25 per attendee...
...POLITICS JOHN H. FUND How Howie Did It SACRAMENTO HEN AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine invited me to accompany him to one of the 1,420 Howard Dean house parties held across the country last December 30, i I jumped at the chance to : meet some "Deaniacs"— 1 or Howard Dean fanatics...
...That will change quickly should Dean win the primaries and become his party's standard bearer...
...That was too much for the weather-blessed Californians in the room...
...Indeed, the Dean team has recruited and trained a small army of savvy volunteers...
...What I found was a gathering that could have been a classic focus group of National Public Radio listeners...
...The Dean campaign has raised well over $40 million, far outdistancing any of the other Democratic candidates...
...Indeed, several people I spoke with were afflicted with the "minority party" mentality that I had seen so many Republicans suffer from over the years: a defensiveness about the viability of their views coupled with a pugnacious anger against opponents who they were convinced had won unfairly...
...You are defined by the primary contests and introduced to the public by how you win them and on what terms...
...Private sector unions, such as the Teamsters, have tended to side with Rep...
...Is there a primary in Florida a little later...
...Dean remains an underdog to become president, but if he wants to leave politics and go into private business he and his staff have the makings of a great sales team...
...Dean's feistiness was especially welcome in a state that had just seen Democrats take a shellacking with the recall of Governor Gray Davis at the hands of GOP Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger...
...It's a lot harder to define yourself after you win the prize," Bruce Reed, who was Bill Clinton's issues director in 1992, told the National Journal...
...The chattering crowd was hushed at 6:30 p.m...
...National Review summed up his image problem with its cover story featuring an angry, vein-popping picture of the former governor over the headline: "Please Nominate This Man...
...Dean's money advantage has been supplemented by old-fashioned political muscle from the public employee trade unions...
...As I left the house party in Sacramento I noted that while the hosts had been persistently friendly they had also managed to ask for money no less than three times and collected contact information from everyone who came...
...They were earnest, largely polite, and delighted that someone was taking the offensive against the dreaded Republicans...
Vol. 37 • February 2004 • No. 1
