McAuliffe Wins Big in Iowa, NH

[Sam Lowry]

Ugh. This from (Warning) the Wall Street Journal:

"Now the voters are speaking. First in Iowa and then in New Hampshire, Democrats turned their backs on the Deaniacs and overwhelming picked an establishment candidate. With the downfall of Mr. Dean comes the vindication of Terry McAuliffe, Bill Clinton's handpicked chairman of the Democratic National Committee."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110004616

[TexasPatriot]

1. Well Dean dumping Trippi

for an insider lobbiest campaign manager poisons the results of the Dean experiment pretty badly. I hope the campaign realizes that it was never about Howard. They can move mountains.

Imagine the Dean Blogsphere getting together... hashing it out online... and moving on to support another candidate en masse. They could be kingmakers - and if they did - THAT would be the story of the Dean candidacy, not the collapse of Dean's campaign.

[Sam Lowry]

3. Sure, but it ain't gonna happen.

There was too much emotion invested in Dean. You can still see it here. And as far as the Trippi/insider thing goes, I don't know what to make of it. Was it Trippi's fault that Dean lost Iowa? I don't know. Either way, Dean needed to do something. Forget the facile critique of Dean's defection to so-called "insiders." It's an insider's game.

[Julien Sorel]

11. That's where you're mistaken.

The campaign was always about Howard, and nothing but. That's why it floundered: frankly, he sucks as a candidate, no matter how great a potential campaign you put around him. Sure, they played lip service to the supporters, had their little circus sideshow going, but Dean was the ringmaster, star, and general manager, and everything else was a facade. Had Dean's supporters poured that much energy into a more astute candidate, they would have been rewarded better. But of course, most other candidates had too much integrity to run the dog and pony show that Dean did in his pandering to the Dean supporters, so it wouldn't have worked. :shrug:

If Dean's campaign was this magnificent, bottom-up machine, why did he unilaterally, and after consulting only two long-time confidantes, fire Trippi, and replace him with a dreaded 'Washington insider?'? Seems awfully top-down to me. But then, I'm not a part of the magnificent campaign, so I wouldn't understand such affairs, which are over my pink-tutu wearing, Republicrat, spineless head. :/

[TexasPatriot]

15. hrm

i remember reading that 'write an endorsement of your guy' thread on Dean before Iowa... (yes, even as a Clark supporter i took the time to read others cases)

i remember Slinks in particular...
i found it in the archives:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=124927#125245

i think there is a lot of that out there - i know i had heard it from the Dean folks i knew at the time. they really see it as a movement - and honestly i really think change to a more involvement-oriented organization would be good for the democratic party.

i dont think the machine was terribly effective at mobilizing voters... but honestly i think that's because we're just not gritty enough. Most of the companies i've worked for had a better handle on getting things done than the democratic party does. We could be a lot better - and the energy represented by the Dean movement is a step in the right direction

[Julien Sorel]

16. That's why I consider many of Dean's most

ardent supporters delusional. However they see the campaign, however much Dean talks about 'our campaign,' and 'your campaign,' the reality is, it was his campaign fueled by their money and passion -- just like almost every other political campaign is. The idea that they would somehow control it or have any more influence over him than anyone else was absurd from the start, but that's what they believed, and kept trying to convince everyone else of. He's dead in the water now, and staying there is my bet. I just hope he won't have the temerity to come back for more fun in 2008. The prospect of four years of Jeb has me shopping for cheap real estate in Mexico.

[TexasPatriot]

17. but my point was simply

that a lot of the hard core dean supporters are true believers - but more in the candidate as a manifestation of the cause. If that's the case, then for the cause to survive, they're going to have to lose the candidate - or they'll be relegated to a footnote, and everything they've done will fade. Not only that, but people will say 'this cant work' in the future. Populist candidates will have it that much harder to run against the machine.

Maybe they realize that Clark isnt really such a bad alternative.

[ClintonTyree]

2. So it's politics as usual....................

no change in the Democratic Party. Terry McAuliffe; the mastermind behind the 2002 election fiasco wins and the Democratic Party loses. Wonderful, I can't wait.

[freetempe]

4. Terry Mac....

is good at beating the progressives in his own party. He's the best at shutting out the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

BUT, its the Republicans Terry has a hard time beating.

Just wait, we're gonna get destroyed if we pick Kerry.

[Sam Lowry]

6. Why do you say that?

[not systems]

5. If he beats Bush more power to him...

other wise he will be the bastard who scuttled the
best bet to stop the rise of the corporate state.

AKA a quisling.

[genius]

7. Dean was more DLC than Kerry

So I imagine McAuliffe was for Dean.

[Sam Lowry]

8. Come on

Is that a joke?

[AntiCoup2K4]

9. McUseless would campaign for Bush before he would support Dean

DLC is a cancer. Let a cancer run free over your body and see how healthy that gets you.

[Adjoran]

10. If it's a "win for McAuliffe"

then it'sthe first damned win the worthless jerk has had.

McAuliffe was the all-time best Democratic soft-money fundraiser. He was great at it. But CFR changed the rules, and he hasn't been able to adapt. Not that he was doing anything positive as DNC chairman before CFR.

There was a book out in the '60s called "The Peter Principle." The thesis was an observed defect in corporate structure: successful people kept getting promoted, until they reached their own personal "level of incompetence," where they were no longer up to the job they had, so they stayed in it.

McAuliffe surely hit his own "level of incompetence" when he became the Chairman. He's about four years late for a demotion.

[Sam Lowry]

12. Hey, that's pretty good.

I thought the "Peter Principle" was a sociological theory that explains Howard Dean's "I'm gonna have to blow this kid" remark.

[ShaneGR]

13. The bottom LINE, can't argue with the VOTERS!

If you've got a problem with Democracy, and the people voting, I don't know what to tell you.

[Sam Lowry]

14. Weird Sig Line

What the hell does that mean?