A whopping 73,226 people contributed to Dean’s campaign in the second quarter, 50,000 more than contributed to Kerry’s.
This is something very rare: a good news story about money and politics. I’ve never seen one of these before.
Who would have imagined that it would be money that pushed Dean over the edge into the realm of "credible candidate"? Go figure.
Trippi's lesson here is not the banal one, "money talks," but a slightly more subtle point. Money is the one thing that talks to everyone, including those who may be dismissive or out to lunch about online politics or the Dean's campaign's innovations, such as they stood. Money signaled the system that something was up.
The establishment had been shocked to see a power source that large--Dean raised $45 million--develop from a previously unknown direction. "The political press could never figure out what the Dean campaign was," he said. "Now they feel qualified to comment on whether what it did worked." True. But the press feels qualified to comment on any flat-on-your-face failure, which Dean has become in journalists' eyes.
In the summer of 2003, Trippi as manager had enough money to go national, get his guy known, and respond to anticipated attacks. Dean was not tied to party fat cats or the office-holding establishment, in Trippi's mind. Dean had the Net for reaching his people, and his people would later grow to 600,000. He was rapidly stealing the opposition label from the opposition party.
It was from that moment in political time that Trippi told his story of the climactic events in Dean's demise. The story was about broadcast politics winning out in the end.
Broadcast politics has many other names. It's politics in endless refinement of the one-to-many model. It's big donor politics. It's when you purchase all the air time so your rivals can't respond, or drive up the negatives before a candidate is known. It relies on message delivery to targeted groups. It's the astroturf effect--top down media blitzes disguised as "grassroots" eruptions--and other manipulations like it. Broadcast politics takes for granted that 50 percent of the country will not participate in the vote for president, and this is one of the most political things it does.
It's also the Willie Horton tradition in advertising. It's the mind that put Michael Dukakis in a tank to show who's strong on defense. It's the $2,000 a plate fundraisers to get the money to run the ads mocking a Michael Dukakis in a tank. It's the Russert primary, the zinger from Ted Koppel, the feeding frenzy when that happens, and the expectations game, which always happens.
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