Joshuah Bearman

The Believer Stalks the 2004 Democratic Candidates: Dispatches from a Few Cold Places

Introduction and Contents

Dispatch One - Sunday, January 18

DISPATCH TWO—Helm's Deep
File Date: Thursday, January 22,

CHEQUERS, THE BAR AT THE HOTEL FORT DES MOINES
The State of the Union Address: “Communication Skills” = A Smirk While Lying

By Tuesday afternoon, Des Moines was deserted.

Steve Elliott and I stuck around an extra day, and by noon we were probably the only two out-of-state journalists in town. Most of the traveling press had already left for New Hampshire. At eight o’clock that evening, the President delivered his State of the Union address from a big-screen TV to an almost empty room at Chequers, the bar of the Hotel Fort Des Moines. The day before, this bar had been Des Moines’s central locus of power, where you might find Joe Trippi holding court, or catch Walter Shapiro chatting with Tom Brokaw. Now, it was just us and two guys from Chicago who were running some “presentation training workshops” with some local Wells Fargo employees. They specialized in “communication skills.” The two guys snickered at Bush a lot, so I asked them what they thought of his “communication skills.” They didn’t answer directly; instead I got a card about some website (www.ratethepresident.com) they set up where you can evaluate the President’s performance. Whatever; I collected enough cards in the past twenty-four hours, and plus, I already know that when the President speaks, I hear an obvious phony. But he is apparently (deviously) skilled enough to smirk a little while telling the American Public—and virtually the entirety of our assembled government—that the Kay report identified dozens of "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities" in Iraq, a manipulation of Kay's words that is only more comical than it is cynical.

Out in the lobby, during Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic response to Bush’s address, the hotel clerks and porters were looking at me quizzically—like, What the hell are you still doing here?—and later, one even asked me point blank: What the hell are you still doing here?

To find out what had happened, of course, in the previous evening’s whirlwind.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER, IN A RED PONTIAC GRAND AM
Dean and the Queen Bee Theory

“Dean’s Campaign was like a bee hive,” offered Michiel Vos, a Dutch cameraman, as we got lost heading back to downtown Des Moines after a caucus. Vos is a cameraman for Charlotte Corday, who is producing a documentary on the Democratic primaries. We had all four been on cell phones moments earlier getting preliminary results, and word was in: Dean’s dreadnought was listing, outmaneuvered at the last minute by Kerry’s swift boat. And Edwards’s under-the-radar campaign was surfacing straight out of the water like a goddamn submarine. "His campaign,” Vos continued, “is like a hive. In the middle is the Queen, and all she sees is the drones swarming all over. So the Queen thinks the whole world is her hive. This is like the orange hats everywhere. Dean’s own people fooled themselves.”

I like the Queen Bee theory. The morning of caucus day, I had run into a guy I’d seen around a bunch, a Dean activist who’d spent his own money to come in from Massachusetts to pursue some kind of a vendetta against Kerry for his war vote. The guy was tall and lanky and bearded and pointing his finger at me. His glasses were slightly crooked. Since he buttonholed me as I sat trying to write, I typed out his exact words:

“We are so fucking hot this morning. We went out to do ‘visibilities,’ and NO ONE ELSE IS OUT THERE. We were on the streets at 6:30 a.m. First we went to Army Post Road and 9th, coming in from Indianola”—he took a deep breath—“and then we went to our backup location at 5th and Locust. It was full. We went to a third spot, at 14th and Euclid, but we got lost and saw some more orange hats near there, so we just stopped the car and set up our own spot, at 12th. I don’t know even where the fuck that was any more. BUT WE ARE EVERYWHERE!”

Busy, busy bees. In hindsight, Dean’s Perfect Storm campaign may have been a poor strategy from the start. Sure, it made for some media coverage, all these kids running around in orange hats, but apparently kids in orange hats don’t get Iowans to their caucus. Especially kids from everywhere but Iowa. I heard directly from some of the Perfect Storm people that they caught a lot of flak at people’s doorsteps for being outsiders. Their massive volunteer effort looked impressive, but provided a false comfort, and perhaps more importantly, wasted resources. Stretching between Dean’s Iowa headquarters and the Perfect Storm Welcome Center next door hung a banner that read I SEE DEAN PEOPLE. But what the Dean people weren’t seeing was the Blue Room in Kerry’s office two blocks away, where John Norris, Kerry’s State Director, had a computerized map of Iowa’s 1,993 precincts that he used to target Kerry’s door-knocking and phone-banking to precisely the areas that needed boosts. Norris, an old hand at caucuses, had his volunteers, mostly Iowans, and many veterans, making only the necessary calls. All that promising mayhem at the Dean HQ, which made it seem like so much was happening, probably meant that some important things were not happening. The overflow of volunteers had to be housed and fed and given tasks, which required a lot of organizational capital that could have been used elsewhere. A week before the caucuses, Dave Nagle (see Dispatch One)—who endorsed and traveled with Dean—told me that Kerry’s organization was this season’s best, which was puzzling then, but made sense now. The Perfect Storm gummed up Dean’s works. Or, as Norris put it the morning after, the overflow of volunteers probably had “a very small margin of utility.”

Which was clear when the clock struck 7 p.m. on caucus night at Des Moines Precinct 44. You could hear the sound of chairs sliding as forty-nine Iowan voters started shuffling into their respective corners. Dean’s group almost didn’t get a single delegate, and probably wouldn’t have had the Caucus Chair not been a Dean supporter. Strangely, Kerry’s Precinct Chair was AWOL, leaving his supporters in the lurch. In the end, Kerry’s core five people adamantly chose to remain not “viable”—to stay uncounted—rather than stand in another candidate’s corner. The Caucus Chair gave the official count: “Edwards: 24; Gephardt: 10; Dean 9; Kerry 5.”

Jim, the volunteer observer from Kerry’s campaign, said, “Can you believe this? We’re gonna win this thing, and we can’t even get a delegate in this room?” Fifteen minutes later in the Grand Am, we learned the full accuracy of Jim’s prediction:

Fear the Turtle

RADIO: With something like 60 percent of precincts reporting, we have 37 percent for Kerry, 10 for Gephardt, Dean at 18, and Edwards with 33.

[Pandemonium all around in our sporty Grand Am.]

RADIO: I remember when the candidates came through, and everyone said this is the guy with the experience and the military background—this is the guy who can probably beat Bush. So, it’s a matter of things’ coming back around to where they should have been...

STEVE : I can’t believe it. What? [On a cell phone] Dean’s really getting killed? [To us] He’s definitely in third place. That was CNN.

CHARLOTTE : Poor Gephardt.

JOSH: I told you, man: Edwards. That’s the power of the Dark Prince.

STEVE: Now Clark is done for in New Hampshire. Clark versus Dean is a side note.

MICHIEL: I can’t wait for Clark to get grilled, chewed, and spit out by the media monster.

JOSH: Why is everyone so down on Clark?

[Chorus from everyone in car]: OH, COME ON!

MICHIEL: Because he’s Mr. Johnny-Come-Lately-I’m-a-Republican-and-I-Voted-For-Nixon. And now he’s against the war even thought he testified before the Senate in favor of it. OK, pal. Besides, you shouldn’t root for a general to head a democracy. What’s with you Americans?

STEVE: I’m just gonna switch camps right now! You know who I love?

MICHIEL: Who?

STEVE: Edwards!

MICHIEL: Yeah, me too. Actually, I was always a Kerry fan. I love that guy.

CHARLOTTE: Hey, I want you guys to know something. I never gave Edwards the time of day. I thought his campaign was going no-where! Shows you my instincts.

JOSH: That’s because you never got close enough to get mesmerized by the flames inside of his pupils.

CHARLOTTE: I’m not rooting for anyone really, but I just don’t think any of these guys can beat Bush. And it’s so weird, because Bush himself is such a loser. How can it be that no one can beat him?

STEVE: He could beat himself maybe.

JOSH: I’d love to see him beating himself.

STEVE: Yeah, and this whole thing with the CIA leak, that could blow up at some point.

MICHIEL: Nobody cares about that—

CHARLOTTE: No, no, no, no…

STEVE: I’m telling you, that’s Watergate, baby.

MICHIEL: There’s no way. Nope.

STEVE: CIA-gate.

[Silence.]

CHARLOTTE: Does anyone have any interest in going to the Gephardt party?

STEVE: We should stop by the Kerry party.

MICHIEL: What about Dean?

STEVE: I think we should go by Kerry’s party for a little bit, and then head over to Dean’s party.

JOSH: OK. But, I have to stop over at Edwards’s party and have my barcode tattooed on the back of my head first.

CHARLOTTE: Ha!

STEVE: We’ve got our own party caucus in here—which caucus party to go to. Looks like we’ve got two delegates for Kerry’s Party; one for Gephardt’s; an uncommitted; a second choice for Dean.

CHARLOTTE: I can’t ditch out on Gephardt just because he lost.

JOSH: Did you guys see Gephardt’s T-shirts: Fear the Turtle?

STEVE: I never fear turtles. They’re not going anywhere.

Bush vs. Freaking Voltron

Six hours later, all the party halls were empty and the risers and lights were coming down, to be shipped off to New Hampshire where a new four-man race would soon shape up between Kerry, Dean, Edwards, and Clark. Dean had given his alarming “victory” speech at the Val Air Ballroom, potentially dooming his campaign, or so say all the political observers, who, as one Iowa Democratic legislator pointed out, especially in this caucus cycle, “get paid a $1,000 an hour to tell you they don’t know shit.”

About that, Steve remained hopeful. “I think Dean can pull if off in New Hampshire maybe. They have all those volunteers, all that momentum.” Steve was still comfortably ensconced in the Hive. He had tasted the honey and refused to come out. I was more skeptical, but hoped he was right that Dean could keep up a respectable fight. Only a few days earlier I had been on Dean’s bus and got a chance to ask him a bunch of policy questions. I liked the way he answered—when not losing his mind on national TV, he’s a clear-headed, straightforward thinker with a reassuring executive oomph—and watching Dean start to disintegrate was a real downer.

Especially since I had spent a lot of time with Zephyr Teachout, the Director of Dean’s online organizing and one of those original seven staffers from a year ago that Dean always talks about. She exudes such enthusiasm about the Dean campaign representing something new, a spontaneous innovation in American politics, and that rubbed off on me a little. Zephyr had a firsthand view of the meteoric rise of the blogs, the MeetUps, the self-organizing fundraising and ballooning army of volunteers, and was so firmly convinced that Dean’s campaign was different, that if he won it would change the political landscape—and her zeal made me wish, whether or not I thought Dean was the best man for the Presidential nomination, that the new way had gotten more of a chance.

And even if Dean loses, his creation should be embraced by the winners. And vice versa. It’s a crying shame that the Democrats added an extra arrow in their quiver that might go wasted. The whole rhetorical refrain of Iowa, and now New Hampshire—about the soul of the Party and who will come out on top: the twentieth century or the twenty-first? The DNC or the electronic grass roots? The Perfect Storm or Kerry’s Kennedy Machine or Clark’s Clinton Machine or Edwards’s new populist insurgency—misses the point. It’s an inevitable struggle in an open primary, perhaps, but also a fatal distraction: because the truth is that for the Democrats to get anywhere next fall they need all the factions to come together like freaking Voltron. This has been my theory all along: that none of the candidates are strong on their own, but if they could all join together into a thirty-foot tall Ultimus Candidate, they’d be unstoppable. E Pluribus Unum. The Democrats need to see their differences not as weaknesses, but as complimentary facets of a brilliant and powerful gem that would power the cockpit controls of the Ultimus Candidate and blind the terrified Republicans back into their hidey-holes. Instead, these guys are at each others’ throats, crowing over victory in Iowa or freaking out on stage—a strategic myopia that is something akin to if Aragorn and Legolas were to kill Gimli while ten thousand orcs were massing by torch-light outside Helm’s Deep. Check out that State of the Union again: the horizon is already clouding with dust as Bush’s troops assemble.

My hope is that New Hampshire will pick a clear winner so the Democrats can stop fighting about what hill to put their field tent on, and start making a credible stand. And since we’re talking long-term, let’s pick somebody to win. Seeing that a Democratic Voltron seems unlikely, I’ll go for Kerry. Or really, Jim Rassmann. He’s the green beret Kerry pulled from a river, and if there’s anyone who can neutralize all the patriotic Huah! of the Republican leadership (all of whom dodged the service themselves, incidentally) emanating from their Convention in New York on the third anniversary of September 11th, it’s Rassmann and his honest story of heroism in Vietnam. This, I thought, is what pushed Kerry over the edge in Iowa. In a moment of wagering weakness, I even bet Steve that Rassmann was going to win Kerry the Presidency in November.

“You really want to make that bet?” Steve asked.

“Yup.”

“Five bucks,” I declared.

“Five bucks Kerry is the next President.”

“OK, buddy.”

Now, in New Hampshire, I’m even more convinced. So to Steve I say: Let’s make it ten.

Dispatch Three - Friday, January 23