No Doubt the Dean Groupies

are very upset with today's NYT piece about Dean and his arrogance in thinking he's got the nomination all sewed up months before a single vote is cast. They will be upset because every single word of the article is true. It spells out major problems with the campaign in its current in-your-face approach, and it mostly has to do with pacing.

Some choice excerpts:

"Five months before the first ballot is cast and 15 months before the last will be counted, Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, spent the past four days being ferried from rally to rally in a chartered jet as though in the heat of a head-to-head national campaign rather than the nascent chapter of a longshot bid in a crowded field. He hit states like Oregon that have little to do with nominations but could be crucial to a general election and all but ignored his Democratic rivals as he roused rabid audiences against their Republican nemesis, George W. Bush."

The groupies are no doubt furious at Wilgoren's depiction of them as "rabid." But she makes the valid point Dean isn't campaigning where he needs to campaign. But Dean and Trippi believe all of their hype, and they are apparently trying to psych out the other candidates (not to mention Bush and Rove, who are scarcely giving Dean all that much thought at this point) into trying to bail out of the campaign. It isn't working, obviously, and the other candidates are smart enough to know that pacing in a campaign is everything.

Yet many of Dean's supporters don't understand the concept of pacing. Because the latest polls in NH are showing Dean way ahead of John Kerry, many of them believe Dean has it made, that Kerry and all of the rest should drop out before the real campaign has actually started. The fact is polls five months before the primaries begin are absolutely worthless.

This paragraph no doubt has the supporters upset, but it is nonetheless true:

"But the presidential-style trip could increase the risk of Dr. Dean peaking too early--and revealed other potential pitfalls. Holding oceans of blue Dean placards at every step were nearly all white hands, a homogeneity the campaign tried to counter with a rainbow of supporters on stage, which only drew more attention to the lack of diversity in the audience. The feisty crowds were filled with Birkenstock liberals whose loudest ovations always followed Dr. Dean's antiwar riff--there were few union members, African-Americans, or immigrants."

Kind of like the 2000 Republican convention. Again, the groupies would be angry at the characterization they are a bunch of retreads from the 1960s taken in by a smooth talker.

And this paragraph is key:

"It remains unclear how such untraditional rallies will translate into the nuts-and-bolts of nominating like endorsements, voter registration, rund-raising and debates. The campaign also may have trouble keeping people interested and preventing its events in coming weeks from seeming mundane."

And that's already happened, if last night's speech was any indication. It was the same old, same old, and Dean still hasn't given anybody outside of his groupies any reason why he or she should vote for him. He doesn't present anything of substance, and certainly nothing that can be remotely construed as being positive. It's all anger, anger, anger. Unless Dean's campaign can go beyond the pissed-off approach, it's doomed.