Below are some thoughts on last night's meetup, the state of the Dean campaign, and my involvement in it. I posted it on my blog this morning, but thought I'd share it here as well...
With a heavy heart, I headed out to Dean MeetUp last night. Honestly, I went out of morbid curiosity more than anything else. That and the fact that I still need to return about 25 folding chairs to someone (Bill, if you're out there drop me a line). Anyway, I cannot believe the difference a month can make. About 5 minutes before 7PM there were only about five people there. By the end of the evening there were twenty or so. We spent a good deal of time venting about the media, the lack of guidance from national, the lack of organization in Iowa, and even the way Dean has conducted himself throughout the last month. Several people had been to Iowa and/or New Hampshire and the talked about what they experienced. Not much of it was good. There was a lot of discussion about the futility of visibility-type projects at this point. In fact, one of our campaign coordinators has dropped out of the campaign solely because HQ is still pushing a visibility day this Saturday.
I think, in the end, the prevailing opinion was that they only way for the campaign to be successful at this point is to turn out votes. I agree. There was some discussion over whether we shouldn't be making calls to other primary states, and the opinion of the coordinator was, do what you want, but, at this point the only thing we have total control over, and that includes quality of information, is Houston.
As I mentioned above, I went to the MeetUp, just to see how many people would show up and what we would discuss. Over the last few weeks, I have been making my peace with the fact that Dean is probably done. I had even been spending some time over at the Edwards site and was planning to contribute some money this weekend.
Halfway through the evening, however, it struck me that the state of the campaign right now, is the same state it was in way back in April 2003 when I first signed on. I signed on not because I was a Deaniac, not because I wanted to be a part of the biggest grassroots campaign ever, and not because of an internet operation. I joined because Howard Dean was out there talking about the things that I had been railing about on [my]blog since 2002. He was the only Democrat who was standing up to the Bush Administration and berating the Democratic Party for rolling over and playing dead. He was the only candidate who made me feel that it was worth getting off my ass and getting involved.
Even though he was the longest of long shots, I still signed up.
The way the campaign went this summer was great and it was fun, but sometimes I wish it had never happened. I wish I had never let myself believe that getting the nomination was going to be easy. In some ways, it would have been better to fight this thing out as the underdog all the way. On the other hand, there is not one other candidate in the race right now that has effected the state of the Democratic Party and the political landscape the way Howard Dean has, and that probably would not have happened had he remained an asterisk in the polls.
The long and short of it is that things are not much different than they were in April. I could bitch about media onslaughts and push polling and stupid orange hats and Dick Gephardt's Iowa murder-suicide and what the campaign should have done all I want, but it is not going to change the fact that, once more, we are the longest of long shots.
And, guess what, I am still signed up.
So last night I went to Meet Up for the purpose of saying some good-byes and turning in some portable chairs, and I ended up volunteering to go canvassing this Saturday. Because at the end of it all, I still believe that Howard Dean is the best candidate out there and our best shot to take out Bush. I still believe that Dean is the only candidate with the credibility to talk about reforming the Democratic Party. I still believe he, and not Kerry, is the electable one. I'll fall in line eventually, but I am not going to give up until Dean tells me to.