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Trips Up and Out

10:39am Thursday, 29th January 2004

Joe Trippi, web strategist and campaign manager for Howard Dean, is out. The New York Times is reporting a shake-up that has seen the resignation of Trippi and the arrival of Washington insider and former Gore aide Roy Neel as campaign chief executive.

So Trippi, the mastermind of what's been described as "the greatest grass-roots movement in the history of American politics" is himself history. Some $40 million is already in the can and Dean staffers are taking a two week pay break. Will old politics help save the new (and this campaign) or is the Dean moment quickly passing?



Comments

1
Hmm, depends what you mean by the Dean Moment. If we get sucked into the mainstream media's obsession with thinking of the campaign as merely a race among personalities, all of whom are in the end transient, then perhaps we can spend time opining on the duration or otherwise of the "Dean moment". If you look at his impact on levels of engagement, voter turnout and probably on the policy positions of his rivals, I think we're talking about something that is not momentary. I don't think what will happen is the replacement of "new" by "old" politics, but the continuing emergence of something different, in the complex, perhaps chaotic, rollercoaster fashion that real change actually happens. Likewise, I hope you aren't suggesting that Trippi the man, and the grassroots movement he helped facilitate, are the same thing. They clearly aren't.
Posted by John Moore  at 12:28pm on Thursday, 29th January 2004
2
I'd be interested to know how popular Dean is amongst independents and Republicans. Does he appeal only to the liberal / Democrat grass roots? It may be that any candidate standing on an 'anyone but Bush' ticket will have Dean voters sown up anyway; voters in the Democrat primaries know that it's the wider American public who need to be convinced if Bush is going to be ousted.
Posted by Bobby Webster  at 4:02pm on Thursday, 29th January 2004
3
Your being a bit coy about this, aren't you? For those of you (and us) who have been promoting emergent forms of organisation, isn't this rather /illuminating/? - " 'You're going to see a leaner, meaner organization,' Dr. Dean... told reporters on an 8 p.m. conference call.... 'What we need is decision making that's centralized'.... to bring order and professionalism to the decentralized ? often woefully disorganized ? troops that Mr. Trippi led" What are we to make of bottom up going tits up?
Posted by crabtree crabtree  at 4:59pm on Thursday, 29th January 2004
4
Come off it, the promise and possibility of network campaigning does not perish with Howard Dean any more than seeing off the immediate threat of Napster means the music industry will not have have to change. Long-term change is compositional - we have never said that networks are an instant remedy (in fact we actually talk about networks relatively rarely). The point is that right across the social, economic and political landscape network-based forms of organisation are emerging with, in the long-term, potentially radical implications. And of course some of them will fail in the short-term. In fact, because many of them threaten existing worldviews and vested interests we should expect them to fail. As John Moore implies, we surely need a slightly longer-term timeframe on this one.
Posted by Paul Paul  at 10:57am on Friday, 30th January 2004
5
I couldn't agree more. Its an instructive development, showing more how and where what you call networked campaigning is dynamite, and also where it doesn't quite deliver within the current system. I note it more as a reality check. It still annoys me, though, that political conversation on the web is just as specious as elsewhere, given that one 7 second yelp can still de-rail a sensible and important political campaign.
Posted by crabtree crabtree  at 12:32pm on Friday, 30th January 2004
6
What Dean's implosion might also signify is that his whole grass-roots, bottom-up organisation - as it's so often been lionised by the liberal media classes represents just them and no more. The issue of 'electability' shouldn't just be dismissed in terms of shallow, 'personality politics'. Edwards has been siphoing thousands of votes of Dean and that bears testimony to the fact that he's a far more fluent, compelling and intelligent speaker than Dean in person - qualities that remains more important than the ability to campaign through computers. It's possible that the majority of Americans simply aren't amenable to either the kind of politics Dean's advocating or his means of rallying support. It's very easy to presume that the internet, systems thinking, network theory etc is both the future and the remedy. It's a lot harder to prove it to or by the general populace. The medium is not the message...at least outside of think-tank circles!
Posted by Jay Jay  at 5:55pm on Saturday, 31st January 2004

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