Blog For Arizona

A story following on the hispanic conference in Phoenix over the AP wire, depicts Dean as an outsider who taps into Democrats anger with their own parties accomodations with the Administration.

This story makes an interesting point about momentum. Dean is doing the right things in pre-primary season to build momentum where in previous primaries there wasn't all that much momentum to be had. Without any major contests to win, it was hard for candidates to give much appearance of momentum outside of simply doing well in the money primary. With MoveOn.org's online primary of over 330K people, and the tremendous opportunities Dean has uncovered in online fundraising, the primary now has a significant early contest, and is likely to have many more in the future.

The primary wass heavily weighted toward activists and progressives. Some may decry the increased influence that the MoveOn primary gives the Left, but time and results will demonstrate that the tremendous boost it gave Dean was a good thing. DLC types are likely to say it skews the primary too far left for the candidate to appeal to mainstream voters, but when Dean captures the nomination and beats the pants off Bush they will be singing a different tune.

You seldom hear the phrase, "energizing the base", in reference to Democratic politics; the phrase is mainly used when the GOP panders to their Right Wing. I think that lift Dean's campaign success is the result of the Democratic base being energized. Dean's millions are coming a few bucks at a time from regular people, not corporate fat cats or Union treasuries. If the left is being stimulated, look for them to lift turnout, produce a lot of noise and agitprop, and raise a lot of money. Energizing the base could be just as important to Democratic success as Rove thinks it is for the GOP. That is one of Dean's stregths in my opinion, he can raise some excitement on the left and still appeal to the center with his fairly Clintonian economic philosophy.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 7/02/2003 12:54:00 AM