i know I'm not a superdelegate, but....
an affordable endorsement

I think I've seen enough to make a call, to take a stand, and to encourage anyone who reads this to do so as well. As many of you know, I just got back from New Hampshire, where I was exploring and covering the first Primary of this election. I got a chance to see Kerry, Edwards, and Dean in person. After standing back for this long, waiting and watching, I've made my choice, and I just hope it isn't to late.

I'm endorsing Howard Dean.

Of all the candidates, Dean has the best chance to beat George W. Bush in November. He governed in Vermont as a centrist. Kerry's record in the Senate is to the left of Ted Kennedy. Edwards doesn't have much of a record in the Senate, and he's running for President because he didn't think he'd get re-elected to the Senate.

Of all the viable candidates, Dean has the best blend of charisma and substance. Edwards is all style and no substance, entrancing, yes, but empty. Kerry is terribly, unescapably boring. At Dean's town hall, he presented nuanced arguments in an engaging manner. He made sense.

Dean provides a clear vision and direction for a party that has lost its way. Terrorist attacks, gloablization of corporations, trade, and ideas, and the rise of information technology require a reassesment and realignment of the two major political parties. Both are having trouble making the shift. Bush's "compassionate conservative" vision of the new Republican party is, in practice, jumbled and confusing. Most Democrats, on the other hand, have not even tried to recast their party and principles for the new challenges of the new century. Howard Dean's candidacy and platform provides a clear way forward that positions the Democratic party in the mainstream on the important issues of today and tomorrow. Fiscal discipline and equal rights under law for all Americans are not losing issues.

Dean's wife, Judith, is a powerful and inspiring person, a normal woman, independent and sucessful. In contrast, Theresa Heinz Kerry carries with her the air of Washington wealth and power. This is not unusual or fatal on the campaign trail, but there is something so beautifully radical about Judith Dean's commitment to her practice and intention to continue practicing medicine were whe first lady.

There is so much more to say, but I will stop here, and leave the rest for another time. Right now, I need a favor. The Dean campaign is running a bit low on money. And Dean, not John Kerry, and not John Edwards, is our best hope to beat George W. Bush. So we all need to make a choice. Can we afford to give $20, $50, or $100 to help keep this campaign going?

Because I don't think any of us can afford four more years of George W. Bush.

i'm sorry.
back in california

I'm sorry that I called NH wrong, expecting a bigger bounce for edwards. I'm sorry that i misspelled every other word i typed for the past few days. I'm sorry I don't have pictures up yet, although they are coming. I'm sorry that the bulk of what I'm writing about the trip will end up in a magazine in a few months, but rest assured most of the content will find its way here early in some form. I'm sorry that joe trippi had to go, but Dean's campaign needed some bloodletting, and the shakeup guarantees some coverage and maybe a new approach by the press. I'm sorry that lieberman ever said the words "joementum," and that you may have had to hear him say it. I'm sorry that I'm so exhausted, and can't write for too much longer. I'm sorry that some of the most interesting things that happened in NH are things that I'm not going to share with you. I'm sorry you couldn't be there.

i have not yet begun to fight
countdown to New Hampshire: it's over, dude

two quick things. just saw dean's concession, over bar hubaloo. didn't really hear it, but I caught a few things that made me think that he's got a chance to turn it around and win the nomination. He wore a suit and used the time in front of the country to deliver, effectively, a policy adress. the rhythm of this words, the clarity and mannerism of his delivery, they all make me think that the man might bring in 1-2 million over the next few days. he looked and sounded great and i think this is far from over.

I also talked for a minute to a reporter from florida who finished second to bush in the republican primary tonight. He claimed that the US has invaded syria, citing Jane's Defense Report, and that articles of impeachment against bush will be brought up within the week by the Judiciary comittee. lunacy or a peek into the future? only time will tell. last night's best piece of gossip, that Giulliani will replace Cheney at the bottom of the republican ticket, made it onto fox news today. cheers and goodnight.

oh, I'm doing some long format pieces for tiny magazines you've never heard of
countdown to New Hampshire: all up in the shit

and when I say up in the shit, I mean UP IN THE SHIT. like, fighting my way past joe trippi cause I left my hat in the bar. arguing with joe scarborough. etc. there goes mccauliffe. anyway....

Edwards' stup speech last night: he kinda creeps me out. part of it is his consumate skill at controlling a room. you can tell how well he knows how good he is. and it's all about him, although while you're sitting there, listening, all he's doing is talking about you: "Me and you were on one side of the courtroom and on the other side would be armies of corporate lawyers. [...] and what happened is, I beat 'em, and I beat 'em again, and I beat 'em again. [...] You give me a shot at George Bush, and I'll give you the white house." You know, like the only two people in the room are him and you.

Last night, between the Edwards town hall and the post last night in the bar, we went by Kerry HQ for his talk to his volunteers. Nothing really struck me, positive or negative. Cem mentioned to us the feeling of entitlement he got from the candidate, and I think there might be something to that. One thing is for sure: the organization certainly felt more professional, in contrast to the Dean camp around the back of the same building. Firefighters in their union T's acted as bouncers.

Another great thing about being up here is running into all the lesser candidates. Vermin Supreme, for example, who's paraded through town with a boot on his head and a ram's head on his belt. Chris P. Carrot, a guy in a plush carrot suit, is carrying PETA's hopes on his orange shoulders. more on these guys later. Right now Cem needs to get some work done on his Asia Times article and I want to finde and heckle the guys from The Daily Show. keep an eye out for us on C-Span. apparently we were all over it yesterday.

gin and tonics at the momentary center of the universe
countodown to New Hampshire: -about 10 minutes

back in JDs, looking cheesy as hell rocking the wifi from the bar as the first votes are coming in in dixville notch, NH.
fighting for a drink to my left is this guy.

saw edwards' town hall. pitch perfect reproduction of his other stump stops, and i left feeling just about the same as i did coming in. damn he can speak, controlls the room like a preacher, lets all his applause grow and die on its own, never cutting it off. watch how he runs his thumb across his chin and bares his teeth as the applause carries through the room. this is too cheesy. I'm done.

ain't that america
countdown to New Hampshire: 1 day

Mon., Jan 26th, 1:38. JD's Tavern, Holiday Inn, Manchester NH--
Just came from a Dean town hall meeting in Manchester. Quick notes:

1. the mood was definitely subdued, at least through most of the talk. probably due as much to general exhaustion as to Dean's standing in the polls.
2. Martin Sheen is one of the few people left in this country who can credibly deliver powerfull oratory. I mean, damn, dude can talk. I really liked Gore's eventual concession speech in 2000, it was well crafted and well delivered, but Sheen blows him out of the water. Of course he's an actor, so it follows that he can deliver a line, but he's put in enough time as an activist that you can tell he both understands and believes in what he's saying.
3. The content of the talk was a standard stump speech. Same lines, same delivery. The only aberration was during the question and answer preiod. The last question was about Iran, and the waysin which the US can support the student/democracy movement there. As the question was being asked, a bunch of LaRouche-ies started shouting. First one, then, after he was silenced, another and another. The commotion drowned out most of the relatively nuanced response to the question, the gist of which being that the US can't really vocally support the students, as we would open up the students to charges of being anti-Iranian.
4. Edwards can work the hell out of a room and say nothing. Dean has a LOT of meat in his stump speech, but he doesn't have the charisma to take a crowd where politicians need to take them. Clinton had both.
5. WiFi in the Holiday Inn is greedy.
6. Judy Dean is great. The image of a working wife, a two career family, is more powerful and progressive in person than I had imagined.
7. Kerry/Edwards is the ticket. That's where I'd put my money. Anyone want some of that action?

Tonight, visits to some more campaign HQs. Visited Kerry and Dean's HQs last night. Max Weinberg was kicking it at Kerrys. At Dean's there was this hippy who accidentally spit a huge chunk of donut onto Cem when he came in to tell his supervisor that he'd forgotten why he went into the other room. Cem still has donut powder on his shirt. Later, at 6, to see edwards at his town hall meeting at the palace. Tomorrow, hang out with the kucinich team and try and see the Kerry post-election party. cheers.

my ship came in, on time...
countdown to New Hampshire: 4 days

I'm home. slept all day after the red-eye in, now stuffed peppers with the team and one night in DC before we fight our first battle with the ice storm that will haunt us for the rest of the trip.

and it looks like a new newsweek poll is saying that if the election were held today, I'd be richer to the tune of $100 (see below).

pick em
countdown to New Hampshire: 5 Days

I've made a habit, I'm not sure how wisely, of following my heart at least as much as I've followed my head, in living, and in betting. In living, things have turned out all right. No complaints here. In betting, on the other hand, I haven't allways done so well. When I win, I win big. I have a standing bet with a friend that Bush will lose this Novermber. $100, no line, no odds. Lord help me, I just might collect.

Tonight I take leg 1 of the journey to NH: Long Beach to DC on the red-eye. Today, I give you my picks for a few of the more significant contests of the next week or so:

Super Bowl: Everyone's taking the Pats to win big and decisively. They've won 14 straight and who cares about the Panthers, right? We're doing some work at my job for that new Jingoistic Hockey movie, Miracle, that Disney's bringing out. There's a line in the locker room from that movie that stands out: "If we play them ten times, they'd win nine of those games. But not this game. Not tonight." Two powerful halfbacks for the Panthers and an overpowering D can and will change the tempo of the game, shorten it, and the Panthers D will score a touchdown on one hell of a play, some miracle play. I've seen too much out of Stephen Davis in my day to bet against him, unless he fumbles. if he gives up a turnover, the Panthers lose. otherwise......Panthers 20, Pats 17.

NH Primaries: Like I said, dean blew it. Kerry's got the juice and barring some manic episode on his part he'll take 30% of the vote. Edwards takes 25%, dean and clark walk away with 17% each and frostbite. dean just walks out of manchester, heading west into a snowstorm, arrives 2 weeks later in burlington with 300 forest animals in cute little animal sized union t-shirts. the menagerie storms into dean HQ, Dean is screaming at Joe Trippi that they (he motions at the badgers) "have the power. they have the power. they have the power." Zephyr Teachout blogs about it. dean, bearded, in earth tones, then endorses gore for 2008 v. hillary and they spend the rest of the summer in owl farm shooting things.

sluts v. nerds, tuesday nights @ the echo, in LA, free: nerds technically win, but sluts look better and have more fun losing.

see you in NH....

oh, and anyone who wants an RSS/Atom/XML type syndication of this blog can get one here.

since you left me, I've moved around
countdown to New Hampshire: 8 days

Well, Dean blew it. Not by coming in third in Iowa, mind you, but by sounding like a professional wrestler when he gave his post-caucus speech, face beet red, and not using a second of his national TV time to talk about issues. Listen to the weird scream/whinney at the end....not exactly presidential, you know?

Late Edit: already, there is a "dean remix." (via stereogum)

My gut tells me Kerry don't have what it takes, but watch Clark and Edwards....

speaking of which: that's exactly what I plan on doing. A while back I decided to go to new hampshire. and the time has come to start the countdown and read up and write up and find my artic gear and my hip flask and get it all together. and as a sort of countdown to the trip I'm going to introduce/critique all of my companions on the trip, who all, incidentally, write blog-type-things, and there are three of them, and I'll skip a day or two, and that'll get us to friday, when I leave for DC to meet up with them and head to points cold and north. so watch for that here.

and LA people: Myself and my friend Alejandro are spinning FOR FREE!!!! every tuesday night at THE ECHO at 1822 Sunset Blvd. so come out and have a drink and dance or don't but just come, it's a good time and it's free so it's not like we owe you anything or you owe us anything. laidback, neighborhood, etc. 9pm-1am or so. drink specials, etc. 213-268-5685 for more info.

but back to NH. I promised a piece I wrote about dean and springsteen, and here it is, largely unedited or put together because between friends in town and watching football and doing grad school/law school apps. and etc, I haven't gotten around to fixing it up. and it already looks dated. but here it is, with typos and holes and notes to myself:

Jan 4th, JFK Airport, Terminal 6, Gate 12—

I’m sitting, waiting for my plane home to board, reading and listening to an mp3 player. The opening piano chords of “Thunder Road” play, and I feel that familiar stomach tug I remember from adolescence, thinking of girls and the moments right before kissing them.
This gut punch emotion is not just limited to love or music. It can be evoked by almost anything, even politics, and it is what I sense I might find in the legions of Dean supporters I’ll encounter when I go to New Hampshire for the Democratic Primary.
In It Ain’t No Sin to be Glad You’re Alive, the book I read as I wait for the plane, Eric Alterman describes the arrival of Bruce Springsteen, especially the release of Born to Run, as, in his eyes, the arrival of a savior leading the poor downtrodden masses of disenchanted youth back into the home courts of the great figures of rock music. Bruce, he says, channeled the pure spirit of rock and roll.
The stage he sets, loosely: the idealism of the late 60’s, and the powerful rock and roll that had been a part of that time and that idealism, had dissolved into and economic and spiritual depression by the mid 70s. Springsteen arrived and, with Born to Run, kicked down the gates that led to the promised land, a 6-string Moses leading millions of teenagers out of the bondage of that time and place.
I think I recognize in the online scribbling of some Deanies the same wild-eyes fervor I encounter in Alterman’s book.
Before I get any deeper into all this, though, I want to take stock of What I Know to Be True:

1. There is something unique going on in and around the Dean campaign, something heretofore unseen in American politics.
2. Whatever is happening (WIH from here on out) has something to do with the Internet.

There are a few other ideas I’d like to file under What I Believe to Be True:

1. WIH has little or nothing to do with Dean’s policies which, when considered as a whole, are not significantly different from those of the other Democratic candidates. Although the anti-war stance that Dean took early on the campaign brought him into the public eye, there are other anti war candidates who have received nowhere near the levels of support Dean has enjoyed. The same can be said of other policy points. I find it hard to believe that Dean’s often muddled policy pronouncements are behind his front-runner status.
2. WIH has little to do with Howard Dean himself, his history or his manner. Although he certainly has more charisma than Kerry or Leiberman, he clearly lacks the entrancing manner of Bill Clinton or W’s affable friendliness (the “aw-shucks” thing).

Also useful to consider before really examining WIH are a couple Possible Other Explanations for Dean’s ascendancy:

1. He’s a governor. This fact, statistically at least, makes him among the most electable of the 9 candidates. Senators and Representatives are much less likely to hold the office of President in recent years. Before JFK, the last member of Congress to be elected to the Presidency was Harding [check, but it was back at the beginning of the 20th century even if it wasn’t harding.] G. W. Bush, Clinton, Regan, Carter, were all governors. Vice Presidents often win the office frequently, but there are none running in this race.
2. He’s anti war. So are others, though. And I believe that WIH was coming into being, if not fully formed, before Iraq became an issue.

But what is WIH? Dean Campaign Manager Joe Trippi’s early use of meetup.com [explain] created independent, autonomous hubs of political activity under the common banner of Dean’s campaign. These hubs, empowered and organized by modern technology instead of organizational man-hours, could operate and recruit independent of not just orders from headquarters, but also with less financial support [why?]. A lean, organic political and social animal is born.
The attraction of the sort of social network the Dean campaign is providing through the meetups [and …] [alt: social network such a campaign provides][to whom?], distinct from any interests particular to the candidate, is undeniable. The recession of the last few years is nowhere near as deep as that of the early 70’s, but it is real. Young idealists are unemployed and underemployed, disheartened by the decay of the “roaring 90’s” into what they see as unpunished corporate treachery, an unending and (linquistically, at least) unendable state of war, etc…
[The republicans and Democrats are forced by economic necessity to cater to the corporate or organized interests that fund increasingly expensive campaigns. ]
[[useless and unsupported as is]If Dean is Springsteen, or “Born to Run,” the other candidates might have analogs in songs of the day: Kerry (Styx’s “Mr. Roboto”), Leiberman (The Eagles’ “Hotel California”), Sharpton (Ray Stevens’ “The Streak”), Clark (Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” [sounds like a Springsteen song, at least])
In these meetups for dean the lost or looking are finding something of value: each other. Every outcast in the country is simultaneously meeting by the dumpster behind school for a cigarette and planning session. Then they call their friends, who show up and find, at a Dean meetup, the same sense of belonging and purpose that earlier generations found in the ________ _______ of their first punk rock show, or, like Alterman, in Born to Run. They shiver and close their eyes. They smile and then open their eyes and then get to work. That lean, organic political animal grows larger and stronger than even it imagined. The rest of the political world is dumbfounded, disbelieving, and resentful (the jocks just hate it when the weirdoes, stoners, and longhairs have any fun.
This is where I think we are, a few weeks out of New Hampshire. The growth of Dean’s political animal as a cousin to the beast that is rock music is merely a hunch, my best guess as to WIH. I have never been to a Dean meetup, as I write this, but I’ll try to go to one before the trip to NH to see if I can confirm any part of the hunch.

A bit deeper explanation of the nuts and bolts, the whys and hows of WIH, as I see it.

Fundraising:
The meetups and word of mouth attract the masses to the candidate, and the blog and other intensely interactive elements attract visitors to the web site, not just once or twice to read policy papers but again and again, to read and reply to the continuous (alternate) narrative and discussion that occurs on the blog. Just a few clicks later, they’ve given dean a couple bucks. An hour or so later the bat (it fills like a thermometer as donations are received) gets fuller. Expectations, eventually, are surpassed. This is, again, about a sense of belonging, about screaming the chorus with a hundred or a thousand or tens of thousands, being a part of the beast that shook the walls, all without leaving the desk.

Structure: The structure of autonomous, individual cells mimics the architecture od the internet, which was built to be robust to point of near indestructibility. The network built around “people powered howard” so differs from the architecture of most candidate’s support that gaffes or misstatements or policy flip flops don’t have as much of an effect on dean as they would on others because, at the root of it, that’s not what his campaign is about. It’s barely about dean himself. It’s about the rest of the people supporting him. He’s a meta-candidate.
Find in springseen the uncelebrity, the man who spent an off night on tour at the home of a fan who asked him outside a movie theatre about the burdens of fame, the man who left that meeting feeling that he was the luckier of the two men to have had that opportunity. Find in Dean’s organization the same down to earth manner, especially in the earlier months of the campaign, when he and his staffers would stay in the homes of supporters while on the campaign trail.
Dean has shown in recent days a smugness obviously absent in his days as underdog. Alterman notes Springsteen’s habit of “subverting” audience applause by raising his guitar above his head, focusing the crowd’s reverence on it, not him. He was merely the conduit for the holy spirit of rock and roll. The only person who can keep the Dean campaign from achieving all it could may be Dean himself. The catch phrases, famously “you have the power” to close stump speeches, still jump from his lips, but he must remember that, more than any other candidate, and precisely because of the things that have made him the presumptive nominee, this is not about him. He must walk the people powered walk.

don't get your hopes up

I mean, technically I'm back but my time and mind won't really be free till like march.

I'll have something for you soon about howard dean and bruce springsteen that I wrote in preparation for my trip to new hampshire for the primaries. I leave next friday, and have no idea to what degree I'll be able to cover them live.

I just got off jury duty. 7 days in superior court, paying me $15 a day, and they settle at the last minute for almost a quarter mill??? break a juror off a bit, right? some rent money, a weeks wage, or somethin'. if you just got that much cash it's your civic duty, i think, to toss a G to each juror.