I am in a strangely very good mood tonight, partially because it finally occurred to me how exciting the Presidential campaign has become. For Democrats, Iowa is basically a three-way tie and, despite national polls, the projected impact of early state momentum on the overall nomination campaign also shows what is basically a two-way tie. Even the Republican side is interesting, for once, with the establishment candidacies of Romney and Giuliani not only threatening to cause schisms in the party, but also fading at the hands of grassroots Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. Just thirty-one days ago, as I was attending the big turning point debate at Drexel University, it had all seemed like a foregone conclusion of Clinton vs. Romney. While that is a totally awesome matchup for Dems from a winning perspective, it would have simply been boring to see the two of them waltz to their respective nominations. These are rare moments, when you can see history unfolding before your eyes, and even in your neighborhood.
One of the things that strikes me about this campaign is how it turned with such comparatively modest attacks on Hillary Clinton. I remember undergraduate Clinton supporters leaving the debate and complaining about how everyone was ganging up on her, upon hearing which I barely restrained myself from telling them about what happened to Howard Dean when he was winning. Yes, studies have shown that she receives significantly more negative media coverage than Barack Obama, at least lately. However, what she is facing this campaign is absolutely nothing compared to the insane, hateful, venomous attacks Howard Dean faced. Here is an ad that some unions and fellow Democrats ran against Howard Dean in Iowa back around this same point in the 2004 campaign:
The Club for Growth Political Action Committee said the 30-second spot against the former Vermont governor will begin running in Des Moines today -- two weeks before the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
In the ad, a farmer says he thinks that "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ..." before the farmer's wife then finishes the sentence: "... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs."
I've received some anti-Clinton email along these lines from right-wing wackos, but here we have the standard line, from both sides of the aisle, that was thrown at Howard Dean. It is blistering, full of hatred, overtly connects Dean to Osama Bin Laden and, in many cases, was funded by his own party. "Playing the gender card," as bad as it is, really doesn't approach this level of negative attack. This is the political equivalent of being spat on and ridden out of town on a rail.
Those were heady times. After spending years in the political wilderness of the far left (the real far left, not what the right considers far left) and amidst disorganized, ineffective Democrats, the entire Dean experience taught me several valuable lessons. First, as powerful as they seem sometimes, even a group of only 300,000 people can scare the bejesus out of the political establishment if they are smart, creative, and working in tandem. Second, the American political elite doesn't really care about third parties, even when those parties threaten to swing an election. The only way to really scare elites and, hopefully, change their behavior, and is to threaten taking control of something over which they feel ownership (aka, the Democratic Party). Third, scaring the living crap out of both sides of the political establishment is what I enjoy doing the most, or at least one of the main qualities I look for in a candidate. It isn't the only quality, but it is a good quality.
If the establishment isn't scared shitless by you, how do you really know you are making a difference? I guess there are other ways, but clearly there is still something of the avant-garde left in me after all. Ah, shocking the bourgeois elites and their staid values! Tristan Tzara would be proud, though he would probably express it by writing a manifesto denouncing us all. Jesse Jackson had it. Jerry Brown had it. Howard Dean had it. Ginny Schrader had it. Ned Lamont had it. Russ Feingold still has it. Half of these candidates are no longer in office, and some of them never were in office. But half of them are in office, showing that you can win this way sometimes. Who has it this time around? No one really, at least not to the same extent as the people I listed above. The top three are all pretty severely despised by Republicans, and I'm not sure who the Noise Machine has attacked hardest in this campaign. Edwards is probably a little more despised by the media than the other two, and also a little less welcome in some establishment circles. However, I don't think it is a gaping difference, like the one we saw in 2004. Attacks over a haircut are one thing, but what happened to Dean was something else entirely.
So, while it is a fun time, it isn't as fun as it would be if the establishment was really scared, ala 2004 or Connecticut 2006. Those are the really good times. I admit I'm not even exactly sure what I mean by "establishment," and I lash out at it in ways that remind me of the extremely irritating and vague ways others lash out as "elite bloggers." Maybe we bloggers are as much of an amorphous, unknown mass to them as they are to us. Maybe that ignorance is slowly being washed away in both directions and, over time, that will probably be to the benefit of the progressive movement as we are able to make more change. However, there will still be something sad about losing the edge, and the wonderful battles when the establishment is scared. I wish we had one of those this time around.
