Is Dean for Real?

By Karen Tumulty/Burlington

Look back at nearly every campaign trail to the White House, and you will find embedded in the asphalt the flattened form of a once captivating outsider. The story line plays out as follows: he seizes the imagination with a compelling message and personality; he upsets the dynamic of the race; the media lavish attention and praise on him (there is talk that he has created a phenomenon that will change politics); he makes a rookie mistake or two under the TV lights; the reporters turn on him; his fanatical legions realize he wasn't the guy they thought he was; and finally his demise becomes part of the winner's heroic backstory.

The most watched and feared candidate of the moment may be rewriting that plot. It is true that Dr. Howard Dean, the testy ex-Governor of a speck of a state, fits the profile of the doomed insurgent, the Eugene McCarthys and John McCains who have come before. He is not only running outside the Establishment; he is attacking it at every opportunity. But at a time when money talks louder than it ever has in politics, he is raising cash in unprecedented ways and in impressive amounts for a Democrat at this early stage. In a large field of candidates that has yet to produce a front runner around whom the party can rally, he's the only real excitement that the Democrats have to offer. And come February, if he pulls off wins in both Iowa and New Hampshire--both of which appear increasingly possible--the fast-forward campaign calendar of early primaries could catapult him to the nomination.

DEAN'S LEGIONS

A little more than a month ago, insiders were saying the Dean movement had all the resonance of a temper tantrum. Even activist Democrats, the line went, would eventually come to their senses and realize that this antiwar one-noter from liberal Vermont was out of synch with the politics of a post-9/11 world. And what about the Internet-driven rabble that packs his events, those 68,000 who have signed up for yet another of Dean's "Meetup" events at 340 spots across the country this Wednesday? Too young, too alienated, too inchoate to matter.

Then Dean's forces burst from their blogs (weblogs are the jungle drums of the Internet age) and made themselves heard in the old-fashioned language the political establishment understands: money. They deluged his campaign with $7.6 million in the second quarter (ended June 30), which was $1.7 million more than presumed front runner John Kerry, $2.5 million more than poll-topping Joe Lieberman, $3.1 million more than glamorous newcomer John Edwards, $3.8 million more than seasoned Dick Gephardt. As for the rest of the field--including a Senator, a Congressman, a former ambassador, a civil rights leader--not one raised even a third of what Dean had.

A year ago, Dean, 54, predicted he would come in "dead last in fund raising." Now he's ahead, and he has done it the hard way: $20, $50, $125 at a time. Half of it, he claims, came from people who had never before given to a politician. Small individual contributions have leverage because only the first $250 gets federal matching funds. And donors who haven't hit their $2,000 legal limit can be tapped again. So there's more where that came from.

Of course, what it takes to get the nomination is in many ways the reverse of what it takes to actually win the White House. Which is why Dean worries as many Democrats as he excites. However impressive his fund-raising abilities may look against a cast of untested rivals now, they would surely get him nowhere near the quarter-billion dollars that George Bush is likely to have for his campaign. Bush won't have to spend a penny of it until after the Democratic pick exhausts his bank account getting the nomination. Bush political strategist Karl Rove is making no secret of how he would relish using that money acquainting swing voters with a shrill Northeasterner who is antiwar and pro--gay union. And the Republican National Committee (R.N.C.) says it has only begun exploring Dean's record. "We'll be spending a lot of time in Vermont this August," says an official at the R.N.C.

The crowds at Dean's appearances are growing, and they are far more diverse than their "Deanie Baby" caricature. There are more retirees, more soccer moms and even an occasional wayward Republican mixed in with the twentysomethings and peaceniks. In Riverside County, Calif., Lou Stark, 86, is spending three hours a day distributing flyers for this week's Meetup and says, "You're never too old to be a Young Democrat." His newfound political activism has taken him from poring over the obits in the morning paper to surfing on the computer: "I want to see what's on the blog." Among Dean's supporters back in Vermont is businessman Bernard Rome, who raised money for George Bush's father in 1980--and hoped to unseat Dean in an unsuccessful bid for Vermont's G.O.P. gubernatorial nomination five years ago. Says Rome: "When he talked about health care, he was so damn articulate, I said, 'How can I run against him?'"

HOW HE COULD SHOOT THE MOON

The primary process is one reason that political insurgents almost always end up as roadkill. It is stacked against them, and more so in the 2004 race than in the past. After the Iowa contest on Jan. 19, the primaries and caucuses will come like machine-gun rounds, putting a premium on the fundamentals of organizing and endorsements, experience and money. Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to come from nowhere and win. But he had nearly three months after Iowa to build momentum before he needed to lock up the nomination. Next year two-thirds of the convention delegates will be selected within the first six weeks after the Iowa caucuses. And the Establishment has bestowed upon itself disproportionate influence in the outcome. Democratic Party rules automatically award elected officials and other party leaders 800 delegate spots, more than a third of the 2,160 needed to win.

The Dean phenomenon is fueled in part by his special appeal in the first two states, Iowa and New Hampshire. Dean has challenged Massachusetts' Kerry for home-field advantage in New Hampshire, and his iconoclastic, antiwar message gives him traction in Iowa. Two public polls last week showed Dean nudging ahead of Kerry in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Gephardt's stronghold of Iowa has become, in the words of an operative from another campaign, "a three-way dogfight between Dean, Kerry and Gephardt." If Dean runs the table in those early weeks, the political establishment may have to fall in line.

Thanks to his money machine, Dean has started building respectable-size campaign staffs in Iowa and New Hampshire. Over the weekend he moved paid workers into eight new states, from Washington to Maine. In a singularly cocky move, he is running television ads this week in Austin, Texas, as both a welcome-home present to vacationing President Bush and an indictment of other Democrats. "You know, when you think about it, in the past 2 1/2 years we have lost over 2.5 million jobs," Dean tells the camera. "And has anyone really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don't you think it's time somebody did?"

Dean has plenty of doubters. "They've very deftly and cleverly caught a wave here, and they're surfing it pretty smart," says Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan. As for the Internet-driven engine of the Dean insurgency: "It's like watching my 13-year-old daughter instant-messaging," Jordan says. "It's not particularly about politics and policy. It's almost like a reality show."

Nonetheless, Kerry and others have begun to copy Dean's high-tech moves. Kerry has signed a contract with Meetup.com the commercial site Dean is using to arrange monthly meetings for supporters around the country. Kerry and Lieberman have also hired Convio Inc., which provides the software engine not only for the Dean campaign but also for the 1,100 Dean supporters who have set up their own websites to promote his candidacy.

There is a Dr. Dean--like edge creeping into his rivals' rhetoric. Kerry's economic speech last week jabbed Dean with references to "real Democrats"--evoking the Vermonter's signature tag line about representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." And in the most backhanded of acknowledgments, the R.N.C. issued a news release charting the leading Democrats' increasingly critical statements on whether President Bush misled the country about how dangerous Saddam Hussein really was. The gleeful R.N.C. headline: DEMS PLAY FOLLOW THE LEADER. FOR YEARS KEY DEMS RECOGNIZED WMD THREAT...BUT NOW HOWARD DEAN HAS CHANGED THEIR MINDS.

WOOING THE ESTABLISHMENT

One of the forces working in Dean's favor is the disarray and disenchantment within the Democratic Party. If he's angry, well, so are many committed rank-and-file Democrats, especially on the defining question of war with Iraq, on which all the other leading contenders voted with Bush. An insurgent has more room in a field as large as this one, in which no true front runner has yet emerged to marshal the party's institutional forces. Dean's outsider appeal has made all the other first-tier contenders blend into button-down sameness. Campaign manager Joe Trippi, 47, a veteran of six presidential races whose bare-knuckled style matches his candidate's, argues that the early focus on one upstart--which usually doesn't happen until January--has created "the strongest insurgency in the history of politics." Trippi also argues that the converse is true: "Whoever becomes the Washington establishment candidate will by default be the weakest in the history of the party."

Campaigns attract only boutique audiences at this early stage, and the entire field remains largely unknown, even to Democrats. So one question is how well Dean's message will resonate as more people start paying attention; so far, the best he has polled is 12%, compared with Lieberman's 25% and Kerry's 14%. Another is whether the Establishment will try to rally its forces early behind anyone. All nine Democratic candidates will face questions from rank-and-file workers at the AFL-CIO's executive-council meeting in Chicago this week. But the panel appears in no hurry to give its endorsement, which requires support from two-thirds of member unions. Gephardt's long-standing ties to labor give him an edge, and he has already won the support of 10 major unions, including the Teamsters, whose endorsement is expected later this week. But some labor officials suggest privately they could take their support elsewhere if Gephardt doesn't begin to show some momentum.

Dean is taking advantage of this moment, with all its possibilities, to reach out to the party's traditional constituencies. While the crowds at his events are getting more mainstream, they remain largely white. After criticism last week that his campaign was ignoring African Americans, Dean sent the Congressional Black Caucus a letter talking about his record, including his commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa. "As your nominee and as your President, I will never take the African-American vote for granted," Dean wrote. He is trying to demonstrate that now. His campaign has hired Maria Echaveste, who as Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff was the highest-ranking Hispanic to serve in the White House, and Christopher Edley, the Harvard Law School professor who headed Clinton's affirmative-action task force.

The excitement factor alone could be enough to make minority Democrats take a look at the brusque New Englander. Dean shows no sign of peaking too early, says Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager and is one of her party's more effective minority organizers. "He's all that and a stick of gum. He's that hot. The flavor has not left him." She mentions a conversation with a prominent bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest African-American denomination. "I've seen all these cats, but I like Dean," the bishop told Brazile. "I've sent him money."

But the backlash has started. "It's kind of like the Mafia," says a strategist for another Democratic contender. "Everyone wants another family to hit him. You don't want to bring blood into your own house." The centrist Democratic Leadership Council (D.L.C.), which helped nurture Bill Clinton's political career, warned last week that the "far left" was taking over the party and pulling it over a cliff. No one had to ask whom the D.L.C.'s chairman, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, was referring to when he posited, "Do we want to vent, or do we want to govern?" Although Dean's record as Vermont Governor defies ideological labels (see following story), it's not that record that matters now, the D.L.C. argues; it's his opposition to the war, his proposal to repeal the Bush tax cut and how he stokes the anger within the party. In a May memo D.L.C. leaders Al From and Bruce Reed planted Dean in what they called the party's "McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home. That's the wing that lost 49 states in two elections."

THE DOCTOR AS GAMBLER

Dean has been running for more than a year, but his campaign did not crystallize into a full-blown phenomenon until the last 10 days of June. It's instructive to look at those days because it is possible to see both the perils and the potential that lie ahead (see box). He repeatedly took risks--from publicly challenging his donors to ante up more money to putting up early ads in Iowa--and showed that what might kill another politician in the big leagues seems only to make him stronger. Even his rather mealy-mouthed performance with Tim Russert on Meet the Press seemed to galvanize his supporters. They bombarded his website with attacks on Russert--and $93,000 in contributions that same day.

For Dean to ultimately succeed, he must win the biggest bet of all: that he is right about Iraq and the economy. If Saddam is killed or caught or if America clearly wins the peace, the Dean case begins to sound badly off-key. And if last week's 2.4% jump in second-quarter growth is a glimmer of a real recovery, Americans may want to hang on to their tax cuts rather than give them up for Dean's health-care and recovery plan. The Dean message that Democrats find so enticing now could be the formula for a Bush landslide.

"You ask me what the pitfalls are, what do we have to do from now?" Dean says. "I think we just have to keep doing what we are doing." It's working, all right. But now that Dean has proved to Democrats that he can stir their passions, there's one more thing he must do: convince them that he can win. --With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington

With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington