Exit polls from PoliticalWire
February 3rd, 2004
Roy Neel in the New York Times today: Dean v Kerry in later races
February 3rd, 2004
From the New York Times today (pointed out first by Dave Winer):
To win the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs the votes of 2,161 delegates at this summer’s national convention in Boston.
Mr. Neel has said that Dr. Dean expects one or more of the other
candidates to drop out after Tuesday’s voting, and more in the next two
weeks, until by the Wisconsin primary Dr. Dean will be head to head
with Mr. Kerry. Because so many major states are voting in the first
two weeks of March, enough time remains to win the race or to at least
deny Mr. Kerry a majority going into the convention.
From Dave Winer today
| Tuesday, February 03, 2004 |
alt=”A picture named ketchupsmall.gif”>Jim Moore reports
from the Dean campaign. A couple of thoughts. I’d be more encouraged if
the campaign were getting inspiration from new people “in the field” –
although that would reflect an imbalance in perspective. Second, how
about doing something creative with the money? Now that we know how the
2003 money was wasted, what’s going to change in 2004? What is the
newly funded Dean campaign going to do to empower our minds? The
rallies clearly didn’t make a difference. Nor did the expensive
collateral material or television ads. Wouldn’t an Internet campaign
make it easy for voters who care to find out what the issues are, in
plain understandable terms? Activate and then empower our minds, that’s
the challenge. That way, should your guy become the front-runner again,
we’ll all know where to tune to get the counter-arguments when CNN and
ABC go after him. Maybe Dean is the rare phoenix who gets to rise from
the ashes. If so, let’s get to level 2.
P.S. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit pointed to this same comment that Dave is pointing to, with the two resulting in mega traffic to my blog. Thanks Glenn and Dave!
The business case for reloading the Dean campaign
February 3rd, 2004
In the new Internet-enabled political world, the Dean campaign is capable of raising another $50 million dollars or more.
A million people giving $50 each will do it.
MoveOn.org has about 1.6 million people on its list. The Dean
campaign has over 600,000. And there are millions and millions of
people who would prefer Howard Dean to George Bush.
What will it take to motivate folks to reload the campaign?
Here is my sense of the business case for reloading now:
(1) Howard Dean is the best candidate. He is honest, independent,
and caring. He offers the best opportunity to reform health care,
to oversee the economy and stop Bush’s runaway spending, and to help
rebuild our communities. He is free of special interests—and to
the extent we reload, will be even more connected to the grassroots and
to real people.
(2) Howard Dean has been tested by fire. He has weathered media
assaults. He is learning to succeed in the high-attack world of
national politics, and yet do so without compromising his
integrity. As the campaign goes forward, Americans will come to
know him, and will respect and appreciate him.
(3) Howard Dean inspires passion in those who know him. The
campaign has a very strong base of core support that is already
investing in reloading. In the general election, passion will be vital
to getting out the vote. Democrats outnumber Republicans and
conservatives—but Democrats need to be inspired in order to win
elections. Howard as the general election candidate will be able
to mobilize enthusiasm and create an exciting, engaging campaign.
(4) The campaign has learned an enormous amount that can be used to
succeed in the
general election. For example, the campaign is still very far
ahead in terms of combining online and grassroots/get-out-the-vote
activities. These capabilities and the resulting communities of
voters are continuing to develop at a rapid rate, and are absolutely
vital to winning in the fall.