Saturday, December 06, 2003

The End of the Presidential Primary?

The National Conventions were made irrelevant as decision-making institutions by the Direct Primary. Does the Dean campaign's apparent capture of the nomination herald the marginalization of the Direct Primary in its turn by the internet and predictive polling? Not a single legal vote has been cast to select the Democratic Presidential nominee, but almost two months in advance of the first contest, Dean is already acknowledged by most, including the great majority of Democratic insiders, to be the presumptive nominee. Why? Money. Polling. Grassroots organization. Key endorsements. Dean has these resources at his command to a much greater extent than any other candidate, and most recognize that there is now little chance of stopping him from capturing the nomination. Most will give you the same answer when asked how he did it: the internet. But that's only part of the story.

Dean combines a very appealing and galvanizing message with an openness to the bumptious energy of the grassroots community of activists who were just waiting for a call to action and to whom the net is part of daily life. Before Dean even formed an exploratory committee, MoveOn.org, among other net based activist organizations, were tapping the energy, disaffection and money of this constituency. It's not surprising, nor is it coincidence, that the only "primary" yet held was that of MoveOn.org, which Dean won handily. The commonality between MoveOn's and Dean's appeal is the key to their success among this constituency: antipathy for Bush.

In politics, they say competition breeds participation. What many feel to be Bush's unprecedented misuses of power, irresponsible legislation and retrograde regulatory agenda have stirred Democrats, many independents, and even some Republicans, into early and urgent political action. Feeling the gains of the last 70 years slipping away, the old New Deal coalition demographics, and the growing urban professional class have been stung into a swarm of political activity far earlier than is normal for a Presidential primary.

Looking for an outlet for their concern and urgency, they have invested heavily and early, both in time and dollars, in those organizations, causes, and people who seemed most willing to take the fight to the source of their concern. Overshadowing all is a desire to forestall the possibility of four more years of Bush. Is it then any wonder that all this energy has gone overwhelmingly into the Dean campaign? This early pool of support, when combined with the nearly free transmission of message, strategic direction, and resources the internet provides, allowed Dean to perform political feats never before possible. Dean has consistently been able to draw crowds where no one thought there were any, raise money where no one had bothered to look, and convert voters early and permanently all across the country with a powerful message of change. Dean's campaign has grown so swiftly, so resolutely, and so early, by tapping into voters' already roaring appetite for change which Dean was the first to recognize.

The internet was a key ingredient. The grease on the electoral wheels. But the technology that really enables the most inexpensive transmission of a political message, and which is responsible for most of Dean's success, is simple email. Used by every campaign for a decade or more, email is the true workhorse of any internet political campaign, hence the great importance affixed to the size of a candidate's email database. There is nothing extraordinary about Dean's internet strategy; what is extraordinary is the message itself and the eagerness of voters to receive it. The message is what is building Dean's hyperbolistic momentum. The internet carries it, polling sustains it, traditional media buys broaden it. These three elements combine to create a virtuous cycle for Dean that no other candidate has been able to stem or emulate. Even though attacks rain down on Dean from every conceivable political angle, Dean cruises on. Even though on many key issues the other candidates have grown to sound remarkably more like Howard Dean than they did 6 months ago, Dean continues to forge ahead as the others lag behind or peter out. Even though all of the candidates have web sites, some even more professional and innovative than Dean's, Dean's coffers are filled by internet contributions, while other candidates survive on scraps. Even though other candidates had early advantages of party support, name recognition, contacts, or presumptive nomination that translated into substantial leads in the polls and fundraising when Dean was just an asterisk, everywhere Dean went, votes flowed to him. Even in states he never visited his numbers surged, and kept surging.

The lesson is that the Dean phenomenon is not easily reproduced. It cannot, and should not, be expected that successful nomination races of the future will, or even can, follow the course Dean has plotted. It cannot be expected that the combination of internet presence, early polling, grassroots enthusiasm and an appealing message to core Democratic constituencies will remake the Direct Primary process into a largely pro forma exercise that it looks to be this cycle. Indeed, many politicians are looking to reproduce the Dean Factor. But although the amazingly early de facto selection of the Democratic Presidential nominee is enabled by reproducible factors, it is actually caused only by the existence of what a very large number of voters consider to be an extraordinarily bad President, who lacks legitimacy and governs unapologetically from the extreme right, having run on a platform of moderation.

Without Bush, there could be no Dean Factor. Dean does not herald a sea change in American politics, a break-through in electoral techniques, nor a genius strategy which can be adopted by a perspicacious candidate to make the internet rain money and the grassroots leap to their commands; Dean is breaking all the rules only because Bush is in office-- breaking all the rules.

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