Howlin' Howard!
(more on this later -- just had a mini-crash and have to re-load the content. OOPS!)
OK, I am back, and on to the matter at hand:
Dr. Dean was never the front runnner. Big Media/Press had it wrong. He was the leader in raising money, and he certainly was the head-turner when it came to savvy use of the Net by his staff. But that was it. The media created a message, and that message was that he was the story.
But the story was the money and the internet. Not any massive move of grass roots support of the nicely surnamed candidate from Vermont.
End of story.
So he stumbles in Iowa. Some pundits, after the fact, referred to this as "Conservative Iowa," where a Liberal message like Dr. Dean's made no sense to the farmfolk.
Wow, could one offend and misprepresent and paint a more incorrect picture? These were Democrats (not Conservatives, not even Republicans!) voting among the Gang of Eight, in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses.
Now maybe there's some basis in thinking that in less citified, more agriculturally dominant state such as Iowa, the voters are less likely to take to the Orange-capped Deaniacs (I like that term), who may have seemed like the latest cult or Jim-Jones ("here, try the Kool-Aid!") types.
But the after-effect is even more of a hoot.
The doctor, in his concession-speech (if you can call it that) decides to go back to rah-rah campaigning, and whoops it up, names a bunch of states, tells his supporters that they will win in those places, and then lets out the yee-haw war whoop. Howard Howls!
And the electronic media has had a field day with that. Dean the nut, Dean the Screamer, Dean the loose peg. Dean the hollering howler, is that what America wants representing it in the White House?
So now he is no longer cast as the front-runner. Instead, he is the newly knocked-off nutjob.
But look at that video one more time (you can find it [1] all over the net). Look at the crowd (including Iowa Sentator Tom Harkin), the Dean supporters. Do they look like they are stunned, shocked, or appalled?
Nope.
They seem in step and on the same page as their whooping candidate. They are all smiles and applause. "Give 'em Hell, Howard!" would seem to be their mood. Down but not out, energized by the "don't count us out" buouyant, ever-energetic torch bearer for their political leanings.
The Media and The Press gave it "look out world, Dean's gone Goo Goo!" spin.
He's not nuts, he didn't go Goo-Goo. He reacted with ferocity and while letting off steam, stayed on message with his supporters. "Don't give up the ship," was his message, and, "we are in it, and in it to win it!"
Now that might be a reason to call him a nut. But after proclaiming him the be-all, end-all, Big Media/Big Press can't scurry backwards and look like they were off base.
The bigger picture ---not seemingly reported or covered by the very same Big Media/Big Press that had declared him the leader and then the loser--- story was that a left-of-the-Democratic-Party-Center Liberal with an anti war message but not a congruent economic or foreign policy message ... and little prior name recognition or experience that people in Iowa might have known of . . . was not getting the big vote in the Caucus process.
And this is a surprize?
Meanwhile, Kerry takes the Caucus with Edwards right behind him. The big news story here is the rise of Edwards (who stays remarkably on target and in focus, and has a position paper on nearly everything on his campaign site [2]) and the fall of Gephart. And the fact that career politico Kerry had an organization and a message that scored big the first volley of the long campaign game.
Who knows what misinformation (in the name of headlines) the pundits and the talking heads will be telling us, come the morning after the New Hampshire primary?
Whatever it is, chances are it will be as reliable and as on-target as the story of Dean being the front runner and Gephart likely to use the Labor endorsements and his next-door-neighbor status to show a competitive Caucus result in Iowa.