Kerry has had two weeks of very good media coverage (particularly the series in the Boston Globe) and may be edging ahead of the pack. He still has low name recognition nationally but that will change. Most people are not paying attention tot he election yet.
Craig Crawford (not the racist that periodically infests SI) thinks that Howard Dean might be peaking.
CQ TODAY – WHITE HOUSE TRAIL MIX
June 19, 2003 – 3:19 p.m.
Candidate Dean in Danger of Jumping the Shark
By Craig Crawford, CQ Columnist
DES MOINES, Iowa — Has Howard Dean jumped the shark?
As the former governor of Vermont stares at me in my Iowa hotel room via the first television ad of the 2004 presidential campaign, I see Fonzie on water-skis trying to jump over a shark.
That was the gimmicky moment when the TV show "Happy Days" went down the tubes. "Jumping the shark" later became an Internet buzz phrase for when a phenomenon peaks.
Peaked or not, media darling Dean is the shark of this Democratic race, says an aide to one of his foes. "Just like a shark, he must constantly feed or he dies," the aide insists.
So Dean, the fast-talking party outsider, is on a feeding frenzy. His campaign makes noise like a buzz saw, forcing Washington insiders to pay attention and react.
Predators at the Straw Ballot
In Milwaukee last week, Dean's troops were the first on the scene at a convention of 1,200 Wisconsin Democrats. They plastered the hotel with signs, hung balloons in their hospitality rooms and staged a rally with their candidate — all before any of the other Democratic hopefuls or most of their supporters had even arrived.
Dean handily won a straw ballot of the Wisconsin convention, beating his nearest competitor, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, by 4-to-1. Thanks to relaxed rules on who could vote, Dean's sharks encircled the straw ballot largely by importing voters from surrounding states. One caravan of Iowans for Dean drove for hours to Milwaukee, cast their votes in the straw ballot and then immediately left for the trek home.
In his hospitality suite, Dean workers buttonholed supporters, urging them to go vote in the straw ballot. All of this activity would be quite normal except for the fact that, before the convention, Dean signed a letter to Wisconsin delegates, along with all of his rivals and Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, asking delegates NOT to participate in the straw ballot.
Other candidates felt sandbagged. Dean had aligned with national party leaders hoping to shut down media-hyped straw ballots, but upon arriving in Milwaukee his opponents discovered his team was prowling for votes.
Jaws of the Sound Bite
None of Dean's supporters are as ravenous as he can be when it comes to sound-bite attacks on opponents. Sometimes even Dean knows he has gone too far.
This week, he lunged at one of the most undeserving of targets. He belittled Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the campaign's nominee for Most Congenial if he does not win the main contest.
Dean asserted that he is the only candidate who has appointed judges. Reminded that Graham appointed judges while Florida's governor for two terms, Dean dismissed Graham as not in the "top tier" of candidates. He later apologized, as he has done after recent off-the-cuff attacks on other rivals.
Just in Time for Shark Season
Launching the first television ad of the 2004 campaign again proves Dean is the most aggressive of the lot, perhaps to a fault. His $300,000 statewide ad campaign in Iowa runs through early July.
Not only does Dean risk wasting money at such an early stage with ads that could be long forgotten by the time Iowans vote in January; but this ad run eats up at least 10 percent of the total amount of money he is allowed to spend in Iowa under federal law.
And besides all that, the ad is crummy. Candidates talking directly to the television audience seldom make effective ads. Dean appears fidgety and uncomfortable in the ad, almost as if he made it on the spur of the moment without really thinking about what he was saying.
In one of the oddest tag lines I have ever seen in a political ad, he says: "It's time for Democrats to be Democrats again. That's why I'm running for president. And that's why I approved this message."
Why would you tell your audience that you approve of yourself?
Despite the hype, the frenzied activity and his official campaign launch Monday in Vermont, this first-in-everything candidate got some bad news suggesting he might be the first to peak. A new poll in New Hampshire shows front-runner Kerry finally putting distance between them, posting a double-digit lead over Dean.
If it is all downhill from here, take heart, Dr. Dean. After Fonzie went off the air they retired his leather jacket to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
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