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February 7, 2004
Voices at the Crash Site Say the Frontrunner Was Never AheadThe Howard Dean crash site has been visited a lot already. Writers on the Net are starting to struggle over their interpretations, including the role of the Net in Dean's crash. But the press suffered a crash too. Where do we locate that site?“Even though we looked like an 800-pound gorilla, we were still growing up,” a senior campaign aide said. “We were like the big lanky teenager that looked like a grown man.” —Jody Wilgoren and Jim Rutenberg, “Missteps Pulled a Surging Dean Back to Earth,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 2004. For his efforts to puzzle through what went wrong in the Dean movement, a gold star to my colleague at NYU, Clay Shirky. His latest analysis, “Exiting Deanspace,” is the most fluid and convincing I have seen. Shirky writes about software and how people use it. Like others, he is interested in the Net effect, and why it did not develop into votes. So his piece is not only “what went wrong for Dean and his supporters?” but also “how was it concealed from view?” He freely admits he was fooled by appearances, along with many others impressed by Dean and the political discoveries of his people. (I include myself.) And for two weeks after the crash, the world of appearances was still fooling Shirky. It led him to a question that misled: “how could such a successful campaign suddenly do so badly?” This assumes a reversal of fortune— from high flyer to dead in the water. But maybe Dean never flew, and there was no crash. This is Shirky’s idea. “Dean’s campaign was never actually successful,” he writes, laying out the “mirage” thesis. It did many of the things successful campaigns do, of course — got press and raised money and excited people and even got potential voters to aver to campaign workers and pollsters that they would vote for him when the time came. When the time came, however, they didn’t. The campaign never succeeded at making Howard Dean the first choice of any group of voters he faced, and it seems unlikely to do so today. Supporters of Dean lived in a bubble of expectations. And Shirky believes that “the way the campaign was organized helped inflate and sustain that bubble of belief, right up to the moment that the voters arrived.” Dean was never ahead, except in the heads of people misreading the election and misinterpreting progress in technology. “So how did this collective delusion of Dean’s front-runner-hood happen?” Shirky asks, being himself a participant. “And what if anything did the use of the Internet contribute to it?” A lot rides on that question. David Weinberger, a Dean supporter, writer and occasional consultant: “That the Internet helped fuel the delusional belief seems undeniable to me. How it fueled it Clay lays out beautifully. How much it fueled it is much harder to figure out, and is deeply important because if we get it wrong, we will set false assumptions about what the Net is good for in political campaigns.” Their point, I believe, is that political writers, Net thinkers, insiders, journalists, and campaign participants should sift carefully through the Dean crash (if it was that) because the lessons of this episode will figure in the next. I expect a lot of that will go on at the O’Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In coming up (Feb. 9) in San Diego, where Joe Trippi will keynote. (Speakers include the founders MoveOn.org, Joi Ito, Mitch Ratcliffe, Doc Searls, Halley Suitt, Ed Cone, Dave Weinberger, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen.) Shirky thinks Dean “accidentally created a movement instead of a campaign.” The movement seemed huge because Net advances had dramatically lowered the “coordination costs” for like-minded people to come together. (Just as locating small donors had become easier if you knew how to do it.) The passionate believers in Dean could now find each other way more efficiently, and this gave the movement its social momentum. But it was a misleading sign. “Fervor isn’t votes,” Shirky writes, aware that he is stating the obvious. Momentum and effort and activity aren’t votes, either. Money isn’t votes. And given the potency of the new organizing tools, a successful movement, with lots of activity, may actually obscure a campaign that is failing with voters: 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… It was also inflated by our desire to see someone get it right, a fact that made us misunderstand the facts on the ground. It can be difficult to admit your desire got in the way of a cooler analysis, which turned out to be right. But then activating people’s desire for a smarter and better politics was one of the things Dean did well. “My theory about Dean’s demise,” writes Stephen Johnson, author of Emergence. “He got fewer votes than the other guys.” He explains: The Dean campaign’s use of the internet has forever changed the way that candidates 1) organize their supporters, and 2) raise their money. But I would argue that it has had almost no effect—and probably will continue to have little to no effect—on the way ordinary voters ultimately decide who to vote for. That decision is still largely made via face-to-face inspection, where possible, and then via television, where you get an approximation, however filtered, of that face-to-face encounter. One way to be right about what the Internet can do is to lower your expectations. Weblogger Jeff Jarvis, also a journalist and Internet division head for the Newhouse empire, was quoted in Salon on this theme. “We all learned lessons in Iowa,” he said. “Howard Dean learned the biggest one — stop being an asshole. We learned about the insular nature of this medium. We learned not to blow up the bubble, not to put too much emphasis on what this thing can do. It can do miraculous, wonderful things, but it can’t win an election. It can change the world, but it can’t win an election.” Scott Rosenberg of Salon, a journalist who has written on the politics of technology, said the Dean campaign did change the world in one big way: Internet enthusiasts had long theorized that the Net could help route around the broadcast media’s headlock on both the electoral process and the broader definition of the acceptable boundaries of political discourse; Dean and his supporters made it happen. Whether Dean’s campaign somehow manages a comeback or, more likely, fades in coming weeks is utterly irrelevant to this accomplishment. Former political reporter for the New York Times, former host of The Connection on Boston public radio, former mayoral candidate, and current audio blogger Chris Lydon develops the same point: Dean was a challenge to major institutions in the news media, even though he was not competing for their position: His first contribution was simply to sound an anti-war alarm that institutional media had muffled. Millions of people knew intuitively that his warning was wise; millions more know it now. He began with a bold exercise in definition—a job of critical journalism that our big media don’t perform these days. In large dimensions and small (like his chippy defiance of Tim Russert), Dean’s campaign was a critique of the somnolent self-satisfaction that runs through our housecat press. And people loved him for it.” Here is where I pick up the thread. The self-satisfaction begins in the press’s claim to have mastered presidential campaigns, in the sense of knowing how the system works, “what it takes” to get elected. Journalists see themselves as political realists who don’t have a horse in the race. They tend to identify with those who have a disciplined, professional interest in campaigning— and lots of inside knowledge to share. Psychologically, this puts them closer to the professionals they write about than the public, whose bombardment by message the professionals are busy planning. That’s how political consultants became media stars. When you look at elections and see a horse race, you also see a consultant, handler, manager, or pollster as rich in the sort of knowledge you need to understand what’s going in this election cycle. But it is only professionals who live elections as “cycles.” Common experience isn’t like that. By absorbing, broadcasting and recycling the political insider’s take on things, journalists have taught themselves to look at the public as a semi-predictable mass of potentially swayable voters, who will respond to the right message. Drip by drip, drop by drop, this acidic way of understanding people begins to influence the journalism you give them. Strange information loops result. The public is told how the candidates plan to position themselves (“He’s running as…”) News stories appear about candidates trying to influence news stories about candidates because newsy expectations in Iowa are themselves making news in Iowa. Things like that. Insiders can explain this (sometimes absurd) world best because they make their living from trying to win in it. Journalists, who are making a living at this too, have to report the race. The two groups understand each other, need each other, and see each other on the campaign trail. They know how to work together to glamorize inside knowledge without conspiring to do so. Maybe it’s simpler. They have drinks together, and talk politics. It has an effect. The national press has claimed mastery of the presidential campaign, not because it knows all, but because it knows—and it quotes—the people who really do know politics, from the inside. These are the pros. The rest of its knowledge comes from trooping to New Hampshire and Iowa and other places the candidates are found to see them live and watch them interact. Inside Baseball and Boys on the Bus: the self-satisfaction Lydon writes about is partly a complacency about these two knowledge streams. “In other words, just about everything you heard and read about the Iowa caucuses in November and December was wrong.” Howard Kurtz, a brand name journalist, wrote that in the Washington Post. It’s a stark statement of failure from inside the citadel of the press. If almost everything done by journalists in Iowa was wrong, then it must have something to do with their knowledge—the instruments for grasping reality in journalism—and not just the facts. William Powers, press critic for the National Journal and another Washington journalist, adds to Kurtz’s charge: The media appear clueless and insecure, unable to decide what matters most, or should matter, about any given candidate. His policy positions? His legislative achievements? His polls? How much money he raises and from whom? His childhood? His temperament? His marriage? His Botox rumors? The odd sounds he makes at pep rallies? Powers thinks this cluelessness (a theme I also developed) has causes: the two knowledge streams the press favors. One is traditional: trailing the candidates around. “Watch Candidate X as he bounds into the requisite greasy spoon, shakes the requisite hands, and makes the requisite small talk about the requisite big issues,” he writes. At the other, postmodern extreme is a different kind of journalism entirely: the dark inside knowledge that all top-flight political reporters possess about how presidential campaigns really work. Based largely on the media’s running conversation with pollsters, consultants, campaign managers, and other hardened political pros, this macro-level strategic coverage has effectively opened up the smoke-filled rooms of old and let the rest of us see what goes on in there. Both methods—going out with the candidates, tuning into the mechanics—have their virtues, he says. At times they go well together and increase our understanding. But neither approaches the mystery point in politics, the alchemy between people and pol in “that very public space where candidates go to connect with the mass of voters.” (Note that if the real election story happens here, it is not an “inside” story.) Although it has other stages, this “very public space” is largely the space of the media. “There’s no Nielsen system for tracking the day-to-day media performance of candidates, no reliable way of knowing how each of them is registering at any given moment in the brains and emotions of the voting 100 million, ” Powers writes. “The closest approximation is the polls, and we know how reliable those are.” Yes, we do. The national press lives in a bubble of expectations too, and it did in Iowa. It has its own aging “software”—the horse race, inside baseball, the boys and girls on the bus, spin alley, polls upon tracking polls, the money race, the endorsement derby, the Russert primary, the expectations game, the gotcha question, “he’s running as…”—all designed to take the mystery out of campaign politics, to smooth it out, make it more predictable and thus reportable with existing tools. And with ideas carried over from previous campaigns going back at least to 1976 and Jimmy Carter’s surprise in Iowa. But the journalist’s software (I also call it press think) sent all the wrong signals, and this led to system failure. The master narrative flunked its Iowa test. Everything you heard and read from us was wrong, said Howard Kurtz on January 19. (“The Pundits Blow It.”) Shirky wrote of the Deaniacs: “The way the campaign was organized helped inflate and sustain that bubble of belief, right up to the moment that the voters arrived.” And the way campaign coverage was organized helped inflate and sustain a news bubble that lasted the same length of time. Clearly, the two bubbles influenced each other. The press bubble was blown around the figure, “front runner in Iowa and New Hampshire,” a narrative device activated by Dean’s poll numbers and bank account. The idea of always having a frontrunner is software— a kind of weekly planner for the press. But frontrunner also organizes the story overall. The other candidates fall in place behind Mr. Front, and their roles can then be cast. If the frontrunner is big news for a while, then frontrunner stumbles becomes an irresistable storyline. For that’s bigger news. Not only do we get this every four years; we get the savvy predictions that we’ll get it, as if the turn in the story (the frontrunner’s fall) already existed and was merely awaiting the contingent facts. This is the inflate-to-deflate cycle that is now apparent to all as a perversity of campaign coverage. Candidates talk ruefully about “being labled the frontunner” because they know how deadly the construction can be. Powers is right to call this a post-modern moment. But it’s also one of those times in politics when words are deeds, and it is journalists doing them. And that’s how we got a front runner who was never ahead. Other Voices at the Crash Site Dave Winer, “Howard Dean is not a Soap Bar:” He did raise a lot of money on the Internet, and that’s interesting, for sure, and he taught us so much, and if he had gone all the way, I believe he would have survived the onslaught of CNN, ABC and NBC, who were his real competitors, not the other candidates for the Democratic nomination…The Dean campaign taught us that you can’t use the Internet to launch into a successful television campaign to win primaries. By raising money to run ads you play into the gatekeepers, who for obvious financial reasons, have a lot at stake in the money continuing to flow through their bank accounts. At some point he wouldn’t need them. If Dean didn’t get it, they did. So they proved that in 2004 at least, they still get a veto on who runs for President. To Blitzer, Sawyer and Russert, to Viacom, GE, Time-Warner and Disney, Kerry seems safe, but Dean is dangerous, he routes around them, he goes direct. In “The Counter-Revolution Has Been Televised” John Perry Barlow writes: It may be that, once again, we have met the enemy and he is us. By pre-announcing the possibility that this might be The Internet Election, we issued fair warning both to the traditional media and the big money politicos that a threat was at hand. Doc Searls uses a conversation with a friend to observe as follows: There is an enormous resolve out there to recall George W. Bush… neither the voters nor the democratic machine cares as much about who started the recall as they do about the recall itself — just like we saw here in California, where the recall started by Ron Unz was finished by Arnold Schwarzenegger. CalPundit: “this time I think the internet enthusiasts are being too hard on themselves.” Look at what the internet accomplished for Howard Dean: it raised a ton of money and generated loads of activist enthusiasm, which in turn bought a huge ground staff, encouraged endorsements from two of the biggest unions around, allowed the campaign to saturate the airwaves with advertising, boosted him to #1 in the polls, and helped fund a 50-state organization that was the envy of every other candidate. Mitch Ratcliffe: “Dean grossly underestimated the role voters want to play in this campaign and we hear it each time he urges people to “join me” or “join us” to create institutional change. Voters want to lead this change, not follow. The “I have a scream speech” showed that he was willing to ignore most of America; it is the fact that he didn’t turn his attention to the national audience when he had it—when he could speak to ordinary Americans—that betrays a failure of imagination.” Joseph Menn, “Dean Backers Debate Internet ‘Echo Chamber.’” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 7. Ed Cone: “From where I’m sitting, the Internet aspects were the things Dean’s campaign got right. Figuring out how to translate that organizational and financial strength into success in the field was the problem.” Michael Cudahy and Jock Gill at Greater Democracy: “Mesmerized by their own Internet magic , the Dean organization, on the other hand, appeared to forget that politics is about listening — in diners and church basements — to the concerns and ambitions of real people. Excited by the virtual conversations on their Internet blog, the Dean campaign failed to appreciate the critical role of effective, local organizing.”
Posted by Jay Rosen at February 7, 2004 1:33 AM
Comments
Great essay, and it raises an essential question. Was there ever really a frontrunner in this race? Does the label 'frontrunner' even make sense? Even now, I bet if Hillary jumped in, polls would show her at comparable or higher levels to Kerry. When I go to a restaurant, I don't pick a dish, call it the frontrunner, and then mentally challenge other dishes against it. It's just not how I make decisions. Why is our political press optimized around this decision matrix, or software, as you put it? Can it be optimized around anything else? As far as I can tell, Howard Dean as Howard Dean was never the frontrunner in the primaries, but Howard Dean as the most differentiated Democrat, and therefore the one most likely to beat Bush, was the frontrunner. When other Democrats started echoing his vicious attacks on Bush, the choice became a lot harder for voters, because the candidates all looked similar (and pretty good). How do you differentiate the candidates from each other? Still today, I talked to a friend who can't tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Without a way to educate voters on the choices they are making, how can voters make good choices? Howard Dean changed the country, the debate, and politics; he just didn't win an election. The great tragedy of science," the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley lamented, is "the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." By that standard, political science is going through a homely phase. It's not even three weeks since the Iowa caucuses, and voters have wiped out several decades' worth of conventional wisdom about presidential primaries. So sayeth the New York Times' John Tierney over at over at the New York Times' new political blog. Yes, I said political blog. He also has a few words on Dean.
Posted by: Grant Dunham at February 7, 2004 6:53 PM | Permalink Clay Shirky’s Exiting Deanspace is good but IS NOT a landmark essay. The main reason for the “failing” of Howard Dean had to do with the THE AWESOME DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF THE CORPORATE POWER MEDIA Corporate America decided that Dean must be savaged, and its media sector made it happen. Read this editorial that has excellent perspective ( more than Shirkey ) http://www.blackcommentator.com/75/75_cover_dean_media_pf.html As you’re reading it repeat 10 times slowly. It’s the media Stupid. Posted by: It’s the media Stupid. at February 7, 2004 11:48 PM | Permalink I agree with ITMStupid, above. I think these folks are WAY over-thinking this Dean thing. It's already been pointed out that when Dean said he was going to break up the media conglomerates, his goose was cooked. The way he was treated after that was obvious. The Internet IS a powerful new form of communication, but it is still in its infancy as media go, and the TV/Press media are all powerful right now in shaping public opinion. We heard tons about the newly involved internet hordes, but seem to forget that most of the American people still get there news the old fashioned ways (if that). Dean was right, we need to return the news media to their rightful place as watchdogs of the govt. intead of lapdogs. Posted by: Pseudolus the ClamDigger at February 8, 2004 9:10 AM | Permalink OK, I admit it: as representatives of Corporate Media, my brethren on the campaign trail deliberately destroyed the campaign of Howard Dean. His failure had nothing to do with his inability to persuade people to vote for him despite his vast bank account and army of supporters. It was us. He threatened us so we crushed him. If you believe this you might as well join the right-wing ranters' belief that the "liberal media" is the culprit in everything that ails society, including their own failure to get more traction for their ideology. Looking for easy scapegoats is the road to ruin, folks. Better to face up to the fact that your guy didn't have it this time so you find a way to make sure he does have it the next time. The only real scapegoat is within us: our inherent desire to see things as we wish them to be rather than how they actually are. Posted by: tom mangan at February 8, 2004 11:06 AM | Permalink Dean blew this one royally. It's one thing to raise a lot of money and go nowhere(or spend a lot, like Steve Forbes, and go nowhere), but that rarely happens unless you are either a flat-out unappealing candidate with a good money machine. Dean, this was not. Instead, what I've heard is that Dean had 500 paid staffers. 500. That's got to be a record for a campaign. What do you do with that many people? Put paid teams in 50 states? All that payroll did was eat up an impressive amount of money(who has ever spent over $18 million in the fourth quarter of the year before an election?) that could have been used as fall-back cash to run ads either against other candidates in later-round states or against Bush. Thus, when he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, he was out of money and luck. If he had managed to retain $10 million, last Tuesday would have been closer, and he'd probably have won at least WA. Then again, there's always the scream... Posted by: Taft at February 8, 2004 5:58 PM | Permalink I concur with the above poster that the BlackCommentator essay is an important read, if only on how the mainstream media is viewed from the outside. It probably goes further than both the "legit" media (of which I once counted myself a member, before defecting from to work as an environmental activist) and its "legit" watchdogs want to go. But in my opinion it's on the money. The article cites at length a pithy Chris Bowers diary entry on Daily Kos, worth repeating here: In order to reduce the increasing control of the Political Opinion Complex over our political process, we need to begin developing and strengthening institutions strong enough to counter its current influence. Specifically, we need to further develop networks where political information can be mass distributed outside of the POC's control. Not long ago, there were several such outside institutions. Unions and churches were a far more pervasive part of people's lives. Newspapers and periodicals were significantly more numerous and varied in their political outlook. Public television and radio had far larger audiences. Political parties and societies were either machines or at least overflowing with active members. All of these now weakened institutions once served as means to perform end-runs outside the control of the corporate media and the Political Opinion Complex. Engagement with the political process through means other than television was far greater. However, those institutions no longer serve as significant counter-weights to the strength of the Political Opinion Complex. For those who have trouble accepting such critiques from grassroots sources (a habit I think the media will have to reexamine, as the blogosphere grows in breadth and depth), similar points are made in less explosive terms in the New York Review of Books article by Michael Massing at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922 My own analysis of the various theories of Dean's Iowa implosion -- giving weight to posts by Dean's own supporters on BlogforAmerica, not just mass media sources -- is archived at the link below, or just click my URL: http://hudson.typepad.com/line/2004/01/understanding_t.html Posted by: Sam Pratt at February 8, 2004 11:46 PM | Permalink The Black Commentator has it right. Michael Massing’s piece about selling the war puts the complicity of the press down to a desire to avoid causing their readers too much discomfort. The contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors and reporters don't like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and a consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration look too bad. Thus, stories about the increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq —both American and Iraqi—are usually consigned to page 10 or 12, where they won't cause readers too much discomfort. Posted by: antiphone at February 9, 2004 2:39 PM | Permalink There are precious few rewards for being right against the conventional wisdom. It's almost another facet of the "horse race" coverage. That is, since the race wouldn't be run for monay months, accurate handicapping had no benefit to it, in constrast to the build-up/tear-down storyline. Now, of course, we can have a conference on the storyline, and it again feeds on itself that way, to the detriment of of any accuracy. That is, some voice above are right, and some wrong - but there's no incentive to sort out which is which 1/2 :-) Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at February 9, 2004 5:04 PM | Permalink Tom Mangan's sarcasm is almost as silly as the rant about the POC or whatever we call the conventional wisdom of the mediacrity. Dean's cataclysmic fall in Iowa can be documented in six main areas, and many smaller ones. First and foremost, an onslaught of attacks that he was too negative, too weird, too unstable, gaffe prone, undisciplined. These RNC talking points were echoed over and over by the media and his rivals, and preconditioned Iowa voters to judge him harshly. Second, the widely reported rebroadcast of Dean's Canadian criticism of the Iowa caucus system, which some have credited with a quick 10 point drop in the polls in Iowa. Third, the negative campaigns by Gephardt and Dean backfired and hurt both candidates badly. Fourth, the campaign failed on the conventional campaign level, organizationally, in its television ads, in its overkill on the phone and with out of state volunteers. Fifth, Kerry and Edwards coopted Dean's message, and sold the message better through conventional media. Six, voters looked very very carefully at the candidates as reflected in the media with a strategic understanding of who would project best through television, and therefore be most electable. With a scant 18% of the vote in Iowa, after monumental work, Dean was finished. Attempting to discuss this without looking at the role of the broadcast and print media is nonsensical. Why was Dean gaffe-prone instead of straight-talking ? Why was he angry, outraged, even outrageous, rather than someone articulating the feelings of Democratic voters to the point that his competitors imitated him? For Deaniacs, the good news is that Howard sacrificed himself so that the party can win in November. Rove and his minions shot their wad and won't recover. Liberal and independent voters distrust the media completely, and Kerry is not going to be Gored the way Dean was. Just want to point out to the fans of the Black Commentator piece that I did go over there and check it out. I have to admit that I wondered for a minute or two if the critics are right and I'm the one with the blinders on. The thing is, I've never seen a "The Media Did It!" theory that jibes with the character/behavior of the media people I've worked with over the past 20 years. It takes real people to be these diabolical conspirators, and as one wag said, anybody who believes in media conspiracies never saw three editors trying to decide which stories go on the front page. Posted by: tom mangan at February 10, 2004 12:34 AM | Permalink Tom: The media aspect here is the old malice/stupidity argument. I think it's true that decisions about what is relevant, at a *high-level*, can have a profound effect - just consider how JFK's philandering was treated versus Bill Clinton's. But being crushed under a stampede of cattle, all moo-ing after the GOTCHA, is no less fatal than being hunted down as a supposed Enemy Of The Status Quo. Just less romantic. So while the "conspiracy theorists" make for easy targets, and Dean was not done-in at the whim of the media, I wouldn't let the media coverage off the hook entirely, on the basis of not being a willed conspiracy, but a rampaging herd. Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at February 10, 2004 2:08 AM | Permalink Judging by the number of people who could have seen Dean making a speech compared to the number who got their information from the media, it has to be clear that more opinions were formed from media sources than from the real thing. The next question has to be: why did the media report in the tone which they used? And we know from the percentages that Dean received an overwhelmingly negative press. Yes, we can blame the American public for not asking enough - or the right questions. Now, when asked why a person voted for Kerry, every report which I have heard says that that person has no anwer beyond "he is electable." And why? Even if you go to Kerry's website, you will find nothing but generalities. When Kerry hit the news, it took me very little time to find out that he was an irresponsible senator who had shown no initiative, no passionate hard work, and who had voted mostly the Republican line. I was immediately scared. But, if I think the press did Dean in, it's just as clear that they have upheld a Kerry who is frighteningly vulnerable. And why? Posted by: Debby Nicely at February 10, 2004 11:45 PM | Permalink Hello All: If you want the truth - Please read on... I will attempt to refrain from saying AH HA! "Mr Dean made statements last year about wanting to break up media The latest news (last article below) confirms what happens if you are running for President of the United States and say something like that... URL: ( http://www.newsdissector.org/weblog/ ) Contact Information:
THE SCREAM On December 1, 2003, Howard Dean was ahead by twenty points in the polls It was an extraordinarily noble and dangerous thing to do: when he The media giants quickly responded by crushing his high-flying campaign John Kerry is a member in good standing of the feeble The news cartel had always been hostile to Dean; independent surveys By mid-December, the news divisions of the four major television networks As 2004 began, Time and Newsweek simultaneously ran cover stories It was the classic Big Lie. Through the power of repetition, the corporate The unexamined factor is how electability became "the issue". It had never On January 19, Democratic caucus goers in Iowa - who were the initial During the week leading up to the New Hampshire primary, the media Yet there had been no tangible basis for that assertion. At the beginning Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times is one of the many deceitful corporate But twenty-four hours later, when it had become clear that the official Gold's colleague at the Times, Ronald Brownstein, joined the chorus of Howard Fineman, the author of the Newsweek attack on Dean, has now written Those Democrats who have been hoodwinked into believing Dean Demonstrably, it is never what a politician does that creates a scandal; The scream that had the greatest impact on the Democratic presidential Such corporate vigilance is inconsistent with the principles of American In recent years, corporations have dramatically increased their power at After the last presidential election, the corporate functionaries on the Howard Dean's campaign now lies in ruins because he chose to confront the MakeThemAccountable.com (
The Guardian's Owen Gibson is reporting today that URL: ( http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/story/0,7497,1144464,00.html ) Media chiefs back Kerry campaign Kerry: Media chiefs have pledged to raise between $50,000 and $100,000 Fresh from his latest win in Maine, the favourite to challenge George As John Kerry's campaign to secure the Democrat nomination - and with The victory in Maine, Mr Kerry's 10th out of the 12 primaries in the Unsurprisingly, the donation from News Corp's boardroom came not from Mr Chernin, one of Mr Murdoch's most trusted lieutenants, is among Others who have pledged to raise more than $50,000 include the Viacom Most of the money raised from these contributors will have to be US political commentators have speculated that Mr Kerry has enjoyed New figures compiled by the Federal Election Commission, correct up to Mr Redstone gave $1,000 to Mr Kerry, $3,000 to the re-election bid of Mr Murdoch, meanwhile, contributed $2,000 to the re-election as Contributors to president George W Bush's re-election campaign Other noteworthy media executives who contributed to party funds To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly MediaGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 Posted by: Larry Davis at February 11, 2004 10:54 AM | Permalink The story of Howard Dean's crash is also a story of two cultures. Although it seemed obvious enough to some of us out here in the Midwest, it was never picked up by the media, nor by our colleagues in the blogosphere and the East Coast. Dean's anti-war message had resonance, but there was no way that he would ever play well in the heartland. His anger and arrogance, the irony and the sneer, were all but certain to offend the majority of voters in Iowa (and Wisconsin, where I live). A different type of arrogance–a smugness that the only people worth listening to are a small group on the coast and in the blogosphere-was shared by both the press and those commentators who saw Dean's campaign as invincible. This cultural deafness is rooted in the classic condescension of the Coasts for those of us in the rest of the country, which now has a high tech as well as intellectual patina. Posted by: Lew Friedland at February 11, 2004 12:44 PM | Permalink Well, Tom, I never declared a media 'conspiracy' so that's a strawman. I said the media did him in, and some following posters have made the argument better than I can. When any social aggregate moves in a particular direction, it doesn't have to be because everyone (or their leaders) got together and decided explicitly to go one way or the other. It can be because they were moved by pressures or attractions that they DON'T consciously recognize, but they move together anyway. The controlling forces of the media that I see now are: There are probably many others. Regardless of what moves the 'media', it is not arguable that the media move the people. Only an intentionally obtuse journalist can argue so. Why else are you in the media if it isn't to 'move' people? I apologize if this is lame. Being a mere high school graduate, I might be suffering from Hubris to be commenting on an NYU journalism blog. Posted by: Pseudolus the ClamDigger at February 11, 2004 8:19 PM | Permalink Hubris? Not so, Psedolus. You are using this blog the way it is meant to be used and making your contribution. I would welcome it if you chose to use your real name, but even if you don't, your comments are welcomed and on point. Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 11, 2004 9:06 PM | Permalink And let me add, that Pseudolus is without a doubt the best of the neo-Classical blogonyms. I am an enthusiastic (but not delusional) Dean supporter, first for his stand on the war, and second for the thousand flowers he allowed to bloom in his differently-structured campaign. Why was such a massive grassroots campaign so ineffective? The candidate and the campaign managers are of course in large part responsible, but I'm wondering about the structural shortcomings. First, it's clear that one big problem was the candidate's lack of star power. Unfortunately, passion, practicality and thoughtfulness don't win without a winning smile. Conversely, I don't buy blame-the-media. Media pile-ons are a feature of the system. A successful politician withstands and then sheds a media stir-fry. Remeber the Teflon President? Still, why were all those networked, netroots people unable to persuade? As a Likely Democratic Voter in Wisconsin, I have been the target this week. I got three letters and three phone calls for Dean. I think the net effect on the electorate of letters and calls like the ones I got is at best zero. The effect was zero because it was too easy, and the recipient knew it was too easy. Technologially easy, sure, but more importantly, socially easy. The grassroots letter-writer, pouring her heart out to newfound penpals in important districts, has no relationship capital with the recipient, and she is not putting her reputation at stake. Cafeteria at work Undecided: Phone call at home Hi, I'm Shawn, and I'm a college student in Atlanta. I'd like to encourage you to support Howard Dean Now, it turns out that Jim Grosbeak doesn't do much of anything as local Democratic chair, but he did walk the Glomco picket with Undecided a few years ago, and anyway,he's been around for 16, 17 years. Shawn's been in politics 5 weeks. The net persuaded 600,000 people to join up. Victory was as easy as drinking water. Now we see, in a world where local influence is rooted in school board meetings and Rotary fundraisers, the effortless campaign was as light as a feather. Posted by: Christian Long at February 18, 2004 5:14 AM | Permalink Do all the posters on this page exist in a world where Kerry's buddy Torricelli and freinds didn't run the Osama Ad? Or where Joe Lieberman wasn't appearing on every radio and tv station calling Dean soft on defense? Or where Kery wasn't given a free pass on his war vote even as he campaigned as Mr Nam? Iowans watch a lot of tv and just like the majority of fat, lazy, moron Americans, they'll eat poison if the tv says it tastes like sugar. The major media repetatively called into question Dean's ability to beat Bush. Now we are stuck with a nominee who voted for 90% of Bush's agenda. Wait till the knives come out for Kerry! Just don't blame the internet for it. Posted by: Joseppi at February 23, 2004 6:30 PM | Permalink |
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