I had a great day at the Digital Democracy Teach-in, in spite of losing several hours of sleep to the hotel bed, which has the firmness of jello that's been sitting outside all afternoon at a picnic. I'm too tired to do justice to the day, but I thought I'd post a few notes. First up was Joe Trippi, until a few weeks ago Dean's campaign manager, who gave a great speech. It is amazing how different the blog reports of the speech are from the media reports of the same speech. The blog reports suffer from lack of analysis or context -- in some cases they are no more than inaccurate transcripts. The media reports suffer from their need to have a hook in the first sentence, the space constraints, and the focus on the game of politics. But I digress.
About a third of Trippi's speech was red meat stump speech, a third a defense of his management of the Dean campaign, and about a third a disquisition on the changing nature of American politics. Trippi is very charismatic, and gave a rousing speech that was full of hope about politics, although a little apocalyptic at the same time. It is easy to see how he commanded the loyalty of so many volunteers. I don't entirely buy his hypothesis that the Dean campaign represented a sea change in American politics, but I don't discount it either. It bears thinking on. The fact that Dean raised so much money, in such a short time, from so many small volunteers, is amazing. The openness of the campaign to bottoms-up ideas, the fact that the campaign appears to have recruited lots of people into the political process, and the number of voters they turned out (many of whom in the end didn't vote for Dean) are all very impressive. At the very least, Dean deserves credit for changing the terms of the debate, and getting the Democrats to take on the Cheney/Rove administration, instead of running "me too but softer" campaigns.
Best quotes:
Broadcast democracy is not working. There were no real debates in political sphere or in the mass media on starting the war on Iraq or on the Patriot act. The only real debates happened on the net.
American politics is now a race to raise money to buy TV time. Politics today - it's about the money, stupid.
There is a reason what we don't have a health care plan in US, and why big pharma writes the medicare bills. There are 33 lobbyists for every member of Congress.
Howard Dean got to a great place 3 weeks before Iowa - more money, more polls, WITHOUT the party. Then ran straight into BROADCAST politics. When Al Gore endorsed us. Alarm bells went off in every newsroom, in every competing campaign. The word was "Kill this guy." The press decided that if he is front-runner, need to put him through the "front-runner" wringer.
"The scream" ran 933 times nationwide. Was it news? No, it was entertainment. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with it. It did damage because of how the media portrayed it and positioned it. Now ABC and CNN have apologized for running it.
If 5 million Americans gave $25 to a campaign, it would change politics in America forever.
I'm out the campaign, but I'm not out of the fight.
It was a very hopeful speech, and a great way to start the day.
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