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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (7970)	12/24/2003 8:58:39 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

DEAN'S 50-state strategy -- DEAN MOVES PAST OPPOSITION WHINERS -- Taking on Karl Rove, the Gloves come off sunspot.net Dean's 50-state strategy Jules Witcover Dec 24, 2003 WASHINGTON - The significance of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's decision to finance his campaign without federal money is emerging in a 50-state strategy designed to outgun the rest of the 2004 Democratic presidential field. While the eight other Democratic candidates focus on next month's kickoff Iowa precinct caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Dr. Dean's self-financed campaign is already staffing and planning heavy spending in many states beyond the opening round of delegate-selecting contests. The ambitious initiative is patterned after the successful 50-state strategy of another small-state governor and early Democratic long shot, Jimmy Carter of Georgia in 1976. Mr. Carter scored a breakthrough in Iowa and New Hampshire and was never caught afterward. A mark of Mr. Carter's success was his ability to run in every state and to post at least one victory on every election day during the primary period. That performance maintained his image as a winner even in the later stages of the 1976 Democratic contest. Late-entering Sen. Frank Church of Idaho and Gov. Jerry Brown of California combined to defeat him in nine of 11 states contested by one or both of them in the late spring. During the same period, Mr. Carter won in seven others. Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi outlined his version of the strategy in a recent telephone conference call with reporters. He insisted that the other Democratic candidates are already being forced into a "one- or two-state strategy" to stop Dr. Dean as a result of his early spurt in the polls and big lead in fund raising. Dr. Dean's decision to forgo the federal subsidy and thus escape spending limits imposed by federal campaign finance law, Mr. Trippi said, makes Dr. Dean the only Democratic candidate who can organize effectively in all 50 states. The practical result of that decision, Mr. Trippi said, is that only Dr. Dean will have the resources to compete in the post-primary period with President Bush, who also has rejected federal money. The president is well on the way to raising as much as $200 million to spend between now and the federally financed national conventions next summer. One other Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, has also decided to avoid spending limits by turning down the federal subsidy, but his fund raising has not been nearly as effective as Dr. Dean's. Most of the other candidates also are planning beyond Iowa and New Hampshire, but are concentrating on several of seven states that hold delegate-selection events a week after the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary. In South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico, Dean TV ads already are running, or soon will be, nonstop until voting day. Mr. Trippi says the Dean campaign also has staff up and running in other states with later contests, such as Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Utah, Florida, Texas, New York and California, and has ads ready to go in 17 states, along with grass-roots operations in all 50. Another indication of the down-the-road strategy of the Dean campaign came recently in a 30-minute TV biography of the Vermonter in Madison, Wis., a state that will vote Feb. 17. Mr. Trippi said the inexpensive airing in a relatively small market was a test not only to introduce Dr. Dean but also to raise money and recruit more volunteers. Mr. Trippi expressed confidence that Dr. Dean would win both Iowa and New Hampshire, but in any event would move on to compete at a high level in all the other states. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman and John Edwards and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark are particularly concentrating on the primaries Feb. 3. One main difference between the situation Mr. Carter faced and this one is that the primary schedule is much more tightly compressed than it was in 1976. Then, the race was more a marathon, stretched out over four months. This time, with the calendar front-loaded heavily from January to early March, it's more of a sprint. Dr. Dean's well-financed campaign argues it has more fuel with which to go all out from the start. Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (7970)	12/24/2003 10:44:39 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Dean's campaign depends on enemies according to a new column by The Boston Globe's THOMAS OLIPHANT... boston.com 12/23/2003 WASHINGTON HOWARD DEAN attacked Bill Clinton without meaning to last week because his thinking about domestic policy is muddled on the occasions when it isn't simply inadequate. That is because there is often more pure politics in Howard Dean than the leader of a grass-roots movement is prepared to acknowledge. Occasionally, it slips out under the general heading of candor -- the initial explanation for all those secret records in Vermont (tongue allegedly in cheek) was to deny ammunition to the opposition; the explanation for his flip-flop in now opposing the transportation of nuclear waste to Nevada is that he is running for president. Most of the time, the political strategy that shines through, also acknowledged by the good doctor on occasion, is that angry Americans who detest President Bush make up the core of his especially partisan Democratic constituency and that he is intends to add other elements of the party's base to his coalition before reaching out to a broader audience. In his most important attempt to outline his approach to domestic affairs -- in New Hampshire last week -- Dean said that what he has learned about America over the past year of campaigning is that people are angry, despairing, and disconnected from the country's large public and private institutions. This is a virtual mirror image of the politics that drives President Bush's political operation from a different ideological mooring. This kind of politics requires enemies against whom to mobilize. For a year, Dean's campaign has made it very clear that the enemies are not just conservatives. They also permeate the Democratic Party, and they must be crushed as permanently as the right-wingers. He tells his followers that they have the power not only to ''take back'' the country but to take back the party as well. From whom? Well, for starters there are the ''Washington Democrats,'' also known as the ''Washington politics as usual club.'' Where Iraq is concerned, this aspect of Dean's war is familiar. Rather than explain why he was willing to accept Saddam Hussein's regime as the price for not invading Iraq last winter, Dean attacks all his major opponents for being Bush toadies. He also uses a straw man by asserting that ''the capture of one very bad man does not mean this president and the Washington Democrats can declare victory in the war on terror.'' No one is, of course, but it helps Dean avoid talking about the real issue. In domestic affairs, enemies are also required. I am convinced that he did not intend to strike out at Bill Clinton; the ex-Clintonites who are supporting Dean are people who dealt with him when he was governor and worked on last week's oration, and they are persuasive in arguing he was not specifically attacking the former president or his record. What is so fascinating, however, is that this need for enemies -- for a domestic equivalent of people playing footsy with Bush on Iraq -- overrode mature judgment. Dean's words make sense only as an attack. Noting the Clinton phrase from the 1996 State of the Union address (''The era of big government is over''), Dean promised a ''new era'' -- ''not one where we join Republicans and aim simply to limit the damage they inflict on working families.'' Dean's rhetoric imagines a domestic party enemy that doesn't and didn't exist. In his damage control frenzy, moreover, he made it clear he wouldn't dare even try to make such an argument explicitly. Oddly, what he did do, in a formulation based a new social contract, is reveal huge gaps in his thinking and one difference with his opponents on taxes that he can only deal with (like Saddam Hussein) through the use of a straw man. The third of four components in Dean's new social contract is retirement security. Saving is so important that he has announced his intention to propose something to encourage saving soon. There's a catchy promise. It was made months ago -- most prominently by Senator John Edwards -- by Dean's evil opponents. On taxes, Dean has come up with a new way of avoiding the fact that in proposing the repeal of all tax cuts enacted since 2001, he would raise the income taxes of the same working families he allegedly champions. He calls it the ''Bush tax.'' All Democrats agree that ordinary Americans didn't get much from Bush's tax cuts and that the money they did get was effectively confiscated by higher local property taxes, service cuts by state and federal governments, and higher health insurance premiums. Dean, however, uses his criticism of the ''Bush tax'' to hide the fact that its complete repeal would take away its low 10 percent income tax rate as well as its increases in the child tax credit, which would raise ordinary Americans' taxes. What sense does it make to argue that because they didn't get much on '01 and '03 that they should now face higher taxes? No matter, he has anger and despair to work with, as well as all those enemies in the party. If Dean is indeed headed toward the Democratic nomination, he might want to channel some of that anger toward a less punitive approach to the very people he seeks to represent. His position on Iraq is enough of an albatross. Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.