Barack Obama reminds me of Howard Dean. Of course, Obama speaks like a prophet and Howard Dean is most famous for his scream. As a presidential candidate, Dean was blunt and almost oblivious to political calculations, while Obama is politically astute and very much attuned to all sorts of political sensibilities. So what is it that the two men have in common?
People forget that Dean was a pioneer. He created the new kind of politics that Obama has now mastered. Dean’s 2004 presidential candidacy was the first bottom-up internet-driven campaign.
After September 11, the Democratic Party gave a blank check to Bush.
Fearful of being dubbed “soft on national security Democrats voted for everything Bush wanted from the Patriot Act and the huge tax cut to the Iraq War resolution. In 2004, American voters had only one choice in effect: two Republican parties. Howard Dean, who repeatedly described himself as representing the “Democratic wing of the Democratic party , was attractive to the Democratic voters who felt their party has totally abandoned them.
But by 2004, the dot-com revolution was already in full-force. Dean quickly understood its potential. Of all the presidential candidates, he was the first to make a deal with the now famous meet-up website to use its social networking services for his campaign. Soon, an email list of half a million was created and hundreds of thousands started meeting in support of Dean in localities across the country.
Through Moveon.org virtual meetings and actual gatherings were also spiraling and the website became a great source of campaign funds. Small donations of $70 each changed the dynamics of fundraising and made clear to Democrats that they could compete with Republicans for hard money.
Hundreds of sites for Dean were created: Doctors for Dean, Unemployed for Dean, and Women for Dean. You name it. The Dean official campaign website was not just interactive but was also open for ideas and suggestions from its supporters. Volunteers were all encouraged to act upon their ideas without checking beforehand. The Dean campaign of 2004 was about empowerment and hope for a new kind of politics fueled by activism from below.
Isn’t this what the Obama campaign is all about?
I do agree with those who emphasize Obama’s personal skills and I too feel his charisma. I understand the symbolic power of the first African-American president. And yes, he is handsome and has a wonderful family. But there is more to the Obama phenomenon than just these important qualities.
In my view, what Obama did this year is that he raised the Dean legacy to new levels. Dean’s mistake was that his campaign almost totally focused on the virtual world. Obama has perfected the internet activism but he has also blended it with conventional campaign mechanisms.
Obama reached out to bloggers and personally interacted with them in their own space. He even created his own social networking site and perfected the online fundraising. Obama clearly understood the possibilities that new technology provides. Unlike Dean, he also used all the other traditional methods of reaching out to voters. With his more inspiring personality and unique talents, Obama was indeed the right guy to show us just what the Dean legacy can do. And the results have been magnificent.
The problem with Hillary Clinton is that right from the beginning she has run a Bill Clinton-like campaign, superb for the early 1990s but ill-suited for the 21st century. Her campaign is run by the best and most expensive “hired guns who are used to the old ways of doing things. The Clinton team seems clueless when it comes to the virtual world and hostile to grassroots politics.
But Howard Dean is not just a legacy. The guy is alive and well and still far more creative than most people realize. Since he became chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he has insisted on an ambitious fifty-state-strategy to rebuild the party from bottom up and has since provided the Democrats with a gift that some thought was impossible. Against the advice of many party celebrities, he rejected the lazy top-down approach long adopted by the Democrats. That way of doing things made the party captive of big donors, organized interests and the sterile politics of targeting specific voters, while ignoring everyone else. In other words, Dean rejected a strategy that is perfect only to keep the party afloat in conservative America not to energize new voters, new ideas and working for real change. Dean was proven right. Thanks to his insightful – and far more democratic – vision, the Democrats won the majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in more than a decade and have become competitive in red states.
No wonder that the Clinton machine, which is used to politics as usual, was hostile to the Dean candidacy for chairmanship of the party right from the beginning and Dean’s earlier organization, Democracy for America (the offshoot of his presidential campaign) supported Obama’s Senate campaign.
Obama, therefore, owes it to Dean in many ways. Dean lost in 2004 but his legacy resoundingly lives on, and not just through Obama. My students keep reminding me that the Republican Ron Paul, who’s hardly mentioned in the conventional media, is also an icon on the internet who has successfully empowered a lot of disgruntled new Republican and libertarian voters.
Whether Obama wins or loses is now beside the point. Just as in 2004 when Howard Dean dropped out, the most important event of the 2008 campaign has already happened. The new politics that Dean heralded is upon us. The troubles of the Clinton campaign is clear evidence that the dynamics of American politics have dramatically changed and for good.
Whoever becomes president will have to deal with a truly different landscape. And in this respect, Obama, thanks to the lessons he learned from Howard Dean, is in fact the only candidate who “will be ready on day one .
Dr. Manar Shorbagy is associate professor of political science. She is specialized in US politics and teaches at the American University in Cairo.
